"Our friendship is of forty years standing, which I should imagine is a severe test, but in many ways we are alike, and Margaret Keith knows enough about me to make allowances. We are both well-seasoned and strong-willed, and sometimes we differ, but I must confess that whenever the point has been one of importance time has proved her right."
Mrs. Chudleigh looked up at him, smiling. "That is a handsome admission, because I shouldn't imagine you easily changed your mind."
"No; as one grows older one's ideas are apt to fall into a groove. It requires an effort to force them out of it."
She said nothing for a few minutes, though his confession had its significance, since she must sooner or later persuade him to abandon one fixed idea.
"After all, none of us find that easy," she remarked.
He glanced across the lawn, where Millicent was talking to Greythorpe. "That girl has a very attractive face. I don't merely mean that it's pretty."
"What do you call it then?"
He seemed to ponder. "I think I could best say it looks untainted, though that is rather vague. There's purity in it, by which I don't mean the guilelessness of inexperience."
"That could hardly be, considering who Miss Graham's father was, and that she has earned her living for some years."
There was a hint of surprise in the look Challoner gave her and she saw that she had made a mistake.