"Mr. Kent. He is a very nice fellow. If he had been in a different position, it would have been most satisfactory. There's no doubt he's very clever—highly talented—the newspapers are most complimentary to him. And—er—of course a novelist is socially—er—he has a certain——"
"Damn it! he can't keep a family on compliments, can he? I suppose he's a bull of himself, eh? Thinks he ought to be snapped at?"
"Nothing of the sort; you always jump to such extraordinary conclusions," she said. "He is a perfect gentleman and proposed for her beautifully. After all, there aren't many young men who've got so much as a thousand pounds in ready money."
"But he isn't making anything, you tell me," objected Mr. Walford; "they'll eat up a thousand pounds before they know where they are.... He wouldn't expect anything with her, I suppose?"
She shook her head violently.
"No earthly occasion. Oh dear no!"
"Let me go and see Cynthia," he said again. "It's a funny thing a girl like that hasn't ever had a good offer—upon my soul it is!"
"You ask home such twopenny-halfpenny men," retorted his wife. "She is in her room; I'll let her know you're here."
Cynthia was "cut up." She liked Humphrey Kent very much—and everything is relative: she felt herself to be a Juliet. She considered it very unkind of mamma to oppose their marriage, and said as much to her father, with tears on her lashes and pathetic little sobs. Sam Walford was sorry for her; his affection for his children was his best attribute. He said "Damn it!" several times more. And then he patted her on the cheek, and told her not to cry, and went out on the Plage to commune with tobacco.
After his cigar, he sought a coiffeur—there is a very excellent one in Dieppe; and he was shaved, an operation that freshened him extremely; and he had his thin hair anointed with various liquids of agreeable fragrance and most attractive hues, and submitted his moustache to the curling-irons. The French barber will play with one for hours, and when Mr. Walford had acquired a carnation for his buttonhole, and sipped a vermouth over the pages of Gil Blas it was time to think of returning to the hotel. A pretty woman, who had looked so demure in approaching that the impropriety was a sensation, lifted her eyes to him and smiled as she passed. He momentarily hesitated, but remembered that it was near the dinner-hour, and that he was a father with a daughter's love-affair upon his hands. But he re-entered the hotel in a good humour.