Kathleen was already deeply hurt by her friend's conduct, and she fired up into intense indignation at this remark.
"Dreadful!" she cried. "Mrs. Sheridan is a good, honest woman. She has given her life for her children, and she is the soul of good nature."
Sylvia laughed good-humouredly at this championship.
"A very excellent person, no doubt," she said, "but an ungovernable tongue. She never ceased talking while we were there. No wonder himself died peacefully. How he must have longed for death—and peace!"
"You don't understand——," Kathleen began.
"I don't profess to understand. I belong to another school to you. My set detests the prosaic and commonplace; we must have the clever and original. Platitudes are detestable to us, unless they come clothed in a brilliant metaphor. Homely virtues I neither pretend to understand or admire. I much prefer eccentricity, even clever vice."
Kathleen laughed tolerantly, recognising that further argument or expostulation was vain.
"Shall we try the lower bridge?" she asked.
"Of course we must. Denis Quirk is to meet us, and I wouldn't disappoint him for anything. Now, there is a man after my own heart, strikingly ugly, so ugly as to be beautiful, and wonderfully clever, sometimes so rude as to be quite original, full of a sardonic humour—an absolutely unique type. Denis Quirk is the sort of man I might condescend to love, and if ever I do love it will be like that river in flood down there."
The road ran high above a rocky gorge, through which the Grey was rushing in a turbulent torrent of water. It roared as it went, and leaped up angrily at the rocks on either side, foaming and bubbling, swirling into small whirlpools, as if in an impotent passion at the constraint.