"Yes—that's true."
Mary Wing looked toward the window, characteristically composed again, but evidently concerned enough.
"Well, I hope so. It would be too stupid of him to miss it, after all ... I can't think how he happened to be with Angela—at the last minute this way."
"How, indeed? But sit down, do, and I'll tell you why it seems particularly—mystifying to me. I hope," the formal caller added, with a glance toward the busy-looking desk, "I'm not interrupting?"
The General Secretary said no, with some brevity.
In sentences less copious and biting than he had sketched out on the corner, Charles recited the history of his futile afternoon. He could not, indeed, believe it possible that Donald, having donned the solemn bridegroom look for Helen Carson, would deliberately throw it off again for the sake of a short drive in the Fordette: which, to say the least of it, could be had at any time at his desire. Nor was Donald really a born fool, who would miss a train through sheer childish carelessness. The inference was that, encountering Angela, accidentally (more or less), just after his second start, the youth had calculated that he still had time to spare; and so had consented to exchange the speedy limousine for the Fordette: quite probably in no spirit more serious than that of a venturesome lark. Charles's remarks, at least, took these generous grounds, reassuring as to the moment. And still a tinge of exasperation crept into his account of his wasted labors. And still something in him seemed to require that he should bring these small responsibilities home where they belonged, for once: leaving them on her doorstep, as it were, for her to jump over when she went away.
But his story, inevitably, was one of ungallant efforts to evade impending pursuit. And when, to point up his lesson, he guardedly suggested a connection between the natural ambitions of Miss Angela, and the two complete transplantations of her family, Mary Wing seemed to gather more of his purely private thought than he had intended. One of her intent interrogative stares brought him to an unintended pause. And she commented quietly, but rebukingly, he considered:—
"You seem to have changed your opinion of Angela since last week."
There, of course, he hardly cared to justify himself. He could not well explain what Angela's resemblance to her mother had signified to him, and why he considered poor Dr. Flower the most magnificent romanticist in the world.
"I merely suggest," he said, with stiffening dignity, "that she does seem to be much interested in Donald—and he in her—now. I happen to know that he called on her twice the day he left for New York, and talked with her over the telephone this morning. But you mistake me, if you think I mean to criticize your cousin—personally. I hope I understand better than that how—all this—is as logical and mathematical as a natural law. How far in the other direction the education of women ought to take them ... that, of course, is not for me to guess.... My point is only that these—these perfectly logical ambitions—are strong enough to be taken seriously by those who mean to oppose them."