“You would begin with a hundred a year, and by slow degrees rise to four,” said Robert, curling his moustache.
“The deuce you would! Then I may with honour withdraw from so ignoble a competition. You can’t suggest any way of making the four hundred at start? I dare say Mrs. Clarendon’s told you all about me. I don’t mind who knows. There’s a great deal of false shame in the world, it seems to me; don’t you think so? But I really think it’s time I turned to something, and what’s the good of one’s friends if they can’t suggest a plan? Of course the social structure is radically wrong. A man like myself—I have brains, I beg you to believe—oughtn’t to find himself thrown out of it in this way. I shall be infinitely obliged to any one who suggests something.”
It seemed to Robert, as he listened, that this young man had a turn for affecting an imbecility which was not in truth part of his character; in the matter and manner of his talk, Lacour appeared rather to yield to physical inertness than to disclose natural vacuity. It might be that he was, as he professed, suffering in body; it seemed more probable that he found a luxury in abandoning his mind to sluggish promptings, even as he showed a pronounced disinclination for activity in the disposal of his limbs. His disastrous circumstances displayed their influence in the whole man. The rate at which he had lived for the past two years was no doubt telling upon him, and nothing tended to counteract, everything rather to foster, the languor which possessed him. His vanity, doubtless, was extreme; the temptation to indulge it no less so. Mrs. Bruce Page, with her semi-sentimental coddling, her pseudo-maternal familiarity, was alone enough to relax the springs of a stronger individuality than Vincent’s. Reflecting thus, Asquith maintained silence; when he raised his eyes again he saw that Ada Warren had drawn near.
Lacour gave the girl his hand, and, in a tone of almost ludicrous dolorousness, asked her how she was.
“I think I should rather ask you that,” she said, with a laugh; “you have a woful countenance.”
“You, at all events, are in excellent spirits,” he returned.
It was true, comparatively speaking. A sudden access of self-confidence had come to her, and her manner was at moments almost joyous.
“Have you observed Ada?” Isabel took an opportunity of saying to her cousin apart.
“I see now how wrong and selfish I have been.”
And to Ada herself she spoke, finding the girl standing aside whilst general attention was being given to tea and ices.