And he answered:
“By the way, I never knew that YOU had been.”
From Dromore's face the chaffing look went, like a candle-flame blown out; and a coppery flush spread over it. For some seconds he did not speak, then, jerking his head towards the picture, he muttered gruffly:
“Never had the chance of marrying, there; Nell's 'outside.'”
A sort of anger leaped in Lennan; why should Dromore speak that word as if he were ashamed of his own daughter? Just like his sort—none so hidebound as men-about-town! Flotsam on the tide of other men's opinions; poor devils adrift, without the one true anchorage of their own real feelings! And doubtful whether Dromore would be pleased, or think him gushing, or even distrustful of his morality, he said:
“As for that, it would only make any decent man or woman nicer to her. When is she going to let me teach her drawing?”
Dromore crossed the room, drew back the curtain of the picture, and in a muffled voice, said:
“My God, Lenny! Life's unfair. Nell's coming killed her mother. I'd rather it had been me—bar chaff! Women have no luck.”
Lennan got up from his comfortable chair. For, startled out of the past, the memory of that summer night, when yet another woman had no luck, was flooding his heart with its black, inextinguishable grief. He said quietly:
“The past IS past, old man.”