"I don't hate her," said Oliver Wick quietly, "but she's vulgar, and too idle and empty-headed to be much good, or happy. Women like that are always on the edge of making beasts of themselves, even if they don't do it."
"Oh, a Daniel come to judgment!" she jeered. "You seem very wise, this afternoon."
"Yes," he answered drily. "I'm always rather sage on Saturdays. Friday's pay day, you know, at my shop, and nothing makes a man feel so wise as money in his breeches pocket. You," he added, "have, on the contrary, gained chiefly in folly, I should say."
She laughed. "Have I? I'm not at all sure of that."
There was something thoughtful in her voice and face, and her mother looked at her wonderingly.
Oliver's face was imperturbable. "Who's the man?" he asked, and she actually jumped, so that her cigarette fell out of her amber holder to the floor.
"What d'you say?" she asked, as she picked up the cigarette. "Who was the what?"
"Man—the man you're contemplating marrying?"
All that there was of the new and the strange in Griselda seemed to her mother to flower in her answer to the young man's question.
She threw back her head and laughed, her pretty throat shown to the best advantage as she did so. Then coolly looking at Wick from under her lashes in a consciously attractive way, she drawled: