‘What’s wrong with me?’ Alice inquired, still depressed by the scene she had gone through.
‘Oh, there’s nothing wrong. It’s only that you’ll see differences at first; from the people you’ve been used to, I mean. But I think you’ll have to go and get your things on; it’s nearly five.’
In Alice’s rising from her chair there was nothing of the elasticity that had marked her before luncheon. Before moving away she spoke a thought that was troubling her.
‘Suppose mother tries to stop it?’
Richard looked to the ground moodily.
‘I meant to tell you,’ he said. ‘You’d better say that I’m already married.’
‘You’re giving me a nice job,’ was the girl’s murmured rejoinder.
‘Well, it’s as good as true. And it doesn’t make the job any worse.’
As is wont to be the case when two persons come to mutual understanding on a piece of baseness, the tone of brother and sister had suffered in the course of their dialogue. At first meeting they had both kept a certain watch upon their lips, feeling that their position demanded it; a moral limpness was evident in them by this time.
They set forth to walk to the Walthams’. Exercise in the keen air, together with the sense of novelty in her surroundings, restored Alice’s good humour before the house was reached. She gazed with astonishment at the infernal glare over New Wanley. Her brother explained the sight to her with gusto.