Mrs. Harrington’s business habits had, in fact, kept her fully alive to the advantages likely to accrue to herself; and the small fact that Eve was penniless reduced these advantages to a mythical reward in the hereafter. And business people have not time to think of the hereafter.
It is possible that simple old Captain Bontnor in part divined these thoughts in the set grey eyes, the grey wrinkled face.
“You’ll understand, marm,” he said, “that my niece will not be in a position to live the sort o’ life” - he paused, and looked round the vast room, quite without admiration - “the sort o’ life you’re livin’ here. She couldn’t keep up the position.”
“It would not be for long,” said Mrs. Harrington, already weighing an alternative plan. She looked critically at Eve, noting, with the appraising eye of a middle-aged woman of the world, the grace of her straight young form, the unusual beauty of her face. “If you could manage to allow her sufficient to dress suitably for one season, I dare say she would make a suitable marriage.”
Eve turned on her with a flash of bright dark eyes. “Thank you; I do not want to make a suitable marriage.”
Captain Bontnor laid his hand on her arm.
“My dear,” he said, “don’t take any heed of her. She doesn’t know any better. I have heard tell of such women, but”--he looked round the room--“I did not look to meet with one in a house like this. I did not know they called themselves ladies.”
Mrs. Harrington gasped. She lived in a world where people think such things as these, but do not say them. Captain Bontnor, on the other hand, had not yet encountered a person of whom he was so much afraid as to conceal a hostile opinion, should he harbour such.
He was patting Eve’s gloved hand as if she had been physically hurt, and Eve smiled down into his sympathetic old face. It is a singular fact that utter worldliness in a woman seems to hurt women less than it does men.
Mrs. Harrington, with frigid dignity, ignored Captain Bontnor, and addressed herself exclusively to Eve.