"Hum!" playfully murmured Kincaid to Anna, "he motions as naturally as if that was what they were talking about."
"It's a lovely picture," argued Anna.
"Miss Anna, when a fellow's trying to read the book of his fate he doesn't care for the pictures."
"How do you know that's what he's doing?"
"He's always doing it!" laughed Hilary.
The word was truer than he meant. The Irby-value of things was all that ever seriously engaged the ever serious cousin. Just now his eyes had left the shore, where Flora's lingered, and he was speaking of Kincaid. "I see," he said, "what you think: that although no one of these things--uncle Brodnax's nonsense, Greenleaf's claims, Hilary's own preaching against--against, eh--"
"Making brides to-day and widows to-morrow?"
"Yes, that while none of these is large enough in his view to stop him by itself, yet combined they--"
"All working together they do it," said the girl. Really she had no such belief, but Irby's poor wits were so nearly useless to her that she found amusement in misleading them.
"Hilary tells me they do," he replied, "but the more he says it the less I believe him. Miss Flora, the fate of all my uncle holds dear is hanging by a thread, a spider's web, a young girl's freak! If ever she gives him a certain turn of the hand, the right glance of her eye, he'll be at her feet and every hope I cherish--"