Respect for her mother tongue caused Mary to demand a repetition of this cryptic statement.
“Hooked it with her Radical,” Jack amplified. “They were married yesterday morning, quite quietly, ‘owing to the indisposition of his Grace,’ the papers say. And they are now in Scotland on their honeymoon.”
“Let us hope they’ll be happy,” said Mary. “She has a very brilliant husband, at any rate.”
“Not a doubt of that. If brains breed happiness, they’ll be all right.”
But do brains breed happiness? that was the question in their minds at the moment. Aunt Charlotte had brains undoubtedly, but as she passed them three minutes since no one could have said that she looked happy. The Duke had brains, but few would have said that he was happy. Mary herself had brains, and they had brought her within an ace of wrecking her one chance of real happiness.
They were in the midst of this philosophical inquiry, when Chance, that prince of magicians, gave the kaleidoscope a little loving shake, and hey! presto! the other side of the picture was laughingly presented to them.
A rather lop-sided young man in a brown bowler hat was marching head in air along the gravel in front of them. One shoulder was a little higher than its neighbor, his clothes looked shabby in the sun of July, his gait was slightly grotesque, yet upon his face was a smile of rare complacency. In one hand he held a small girl of five, and in the other a small boy to match her; and that may have been why at this precise moment he looked as if he had just acquired a controlling interest in the planet. And yet there must have been some deeper, subtler reason for this young man’s air of power mingled with beatitude.
Rather mean of mansion as he was, it was impossible for two shrewd spectators of the human comedy on the Park chairs to ignore him as he swung gayly by. In spite of his impossible hat and his weird trousers, the mere look on his face was almost cosmic in its significance, he was so clearly on terms with heaven. But in any case he would have forcibly entered their scheme of existence. Just as he came level with them he chanced to lower his gaze abruptly and by doing so caught the fascinated eyes of Mary fixed upon his face.
“Good morning, Miss Lawrence. What a nice day!”
He was not in a position to take off his hat, but he enforced a hearty greeting with a superb bow, and passed jauntily on.