“I think that if you marry,” said Mr. Wentworth presently, “it will conduce to your happiness.”
“Sicurissimo!” Felix exclaimed; and then, arresting his brush, he looked at his uncle with a smile. “There is something I feel tempted to say to you. May I risk it?”
Mr. Wentworth drew himself up a little. “I am very safe; I don’t repeat things.” But he hoped Felix would not risk too much.
Felix was laughing at his answer.
“It’s odd to hear you telling me how to be happy. I don’t think you know yourself, dear uncle. Now, does that sound brutal?”
The old man was silent a moment, and then, with a dry dignity that suddenly touched his nephew: “We may sometimes point out a road we are unable to follow.”
“Ah, don’t tell me you have had any sorrows,” Felix rejoined. “I didn’t suppose it, and I didn’t mean to allude to them. I simply meant that you all don’t amuse yourselves.”
“Amuse ourselves? We are not children.”
“Precisely not! You have reached the proper age. I was saying that the other day to Gertrude,” Felix added. “I hope it was not indiscreet.”
“If it was,” said Mr. Wentworth, with a keener irony than Felix would have thought him capable of, “it was but your way of amusing yourself. I am afraid you have never had a trouble.”