“Why, yes, I suppose she is tolerably handsome!” conceded Ravenscar.
“Tolerably handsome!” ejaculated Adrian, in dumbfounded accents.
“Yes, certainly, for one who is not in the first blush of youth A little too strapping for my taste, and will probably put or flesh in middle age, but I will allow her to be a well-looking woman.”
Adrian laid down the fork, and said, with a considerable heightened colour: “I had better make it plain to you at once Max, that—that I mean to marry her!”
“Marry Miss Grantham?” said Ravenscar, raising his brows. “My dear boy, why?”
This unemotional way of receiving startling tidings was damping in the extreme to a young gentleman who had braced himself to encounter violent opposition, and for a moment Adrian seemed to be at a loss to know what to say. After a slight pause, he said with immense dignity: “I love her.”
“How very odd!” said Ravenscar, apparently puzzled.
“I see nothing odd in it!”
“No, of course not. How should you, indeed? But surely someone nearer your own age-?”
“The difference in our ages doesn’t signify in the least. You talk as though Deb were in her thirties!”