“Let the mind take care of itself,” continued Kingcote, smiling slightly as he looked at Mrs. Clarendon. “If a boy has a bent for acquiring knowledge, he will manage that later. I wouldn’t encourage it. Make him a sound creature, that’s the first thing. Occupy him with vigorous bodily pursuits; keep his mind from turning inwards; save him from reflection. If every boy in England could be so brought up, they would be a blissful generation.”
“How about the girls?” questioned Isabel. “Would you educate them in the same way?”
“Precisely, with yet more wholesome effect. Nay, I would go further; they should never open a book till they were one-and-twenty, and their previous training should be that of Amazons.”
“That is a merciful provision,” said Ada, meaning possibly more than her hearers understood.
When Kingcote took his leave the ladies separated. Mrs. Clarendon had before her a dinner party at Dunsey Priors, and it was necessary to give certain orders. Mrs. Stratton took up The Times till tea should appear.
Ada, after pacing about the library for a quarter of an hour, took her hat and went into the open air. Her mind was disturbed in some way; the darkness of trouble was back again in her eyes. She walked among the evergreens of the shrubbery, then strayed to a seat which stood against the wall of the circular portion of the conservatory. The landscape before her was wild with the hues of a sky in which the declining sun fought against flying strips of ragged cloud. The wind was kept off from this part of the lawn, but in the distance it made a moaning over the fields. She watched a cohort of dead leaves sweeping in great curves along the side of the house.
A voice spoke very near to her. It came from within the rotunda; the stained-glass window just above her head was partly open.
“It would be infinitely better,” Mrs. Clarendon was saying, “than that a man like Vincent Lacour should make a prize of her.”
“But she cannot be so infatuated,” returned Mrs. Stratton. “She has sense enough to understand her own position and to take care of herself. My idea is that she won’t marry for some time, perhaps not at all.”
There was silence, then the last speaker resumed.