‘Yes. Have you never seen a child pick wings off flies? Rosemary is still a child. Enchanting. Sweet beyond words. But with a child’s incapacity for love.’
‘But she’s married!’
‘Yes,’ Sheila answered, with dreadful serenity. ‘She was married this afternoon, when I supposed her to be at the Lodge with her aunt. She dropped in somewhere to be married, and picked up Hypatia on the way home.’
‘But....’ Redshawe was helpless.
‘Oh, I knew it must come soon. She had been engaged for some years.’
‘May I ask to whom?’
‘The Reverend Oliver Wendell Brunt, an American gentleman.’
Redshawe paced the room. ‘And where in thunder is he?’
‘On his knees, no doubt, invoking God’s blessing on his work in China. He is a missionary. They leave to-morrow together. They’ve just had the call from God and must obey at once. Rosemary has apologized very nicely for her eccentricity. She was afraid I might make a fuss, and cry at the ceremony; so she arranged it this way. And she just doesn’t understand what it all means to me.’
‘What an inhuman crowd they are!’ muttered Redshawe. And he gasped to recall Rosemary’s serene bearing, her untroubled beauty, her lucid reasoning, her faultless rendering of Scriabine, and the placid prattle of her uncle and aunt. An incredible household.