Elizabeth cast a quick look at him and lapsed into silence. The second problem was already absorbing her vastly more than the first. It was infinitely greater, the issue infinitely more important. To the first problem, when David had once grasped it fairly, there was so simple a solution, did he but choose to take it. In any case, however, it was, to her mind, on another plane. It didn’t belong to the same category as this second problem. Of course you may say that the mental problem existed solely in Elizabeth’s imagination. But then she did not think it did; nor, you will realize, did John.
Suddenly she spoke again, and quite irrelevantly to her former remarks.
“What particular interest has—Sir David, I suppose I must call him, in dress clothes?”
“Dress clothes?” queried John bewildered.
“Dress clothes,” reiterated Elizabeth. “I happened to say—quite idly, you understand,—that you’d sooner go without your dinner than not dress for it. He asked me if I meant that, and when I replied that I did, I saw at once that, far from being the little trivial matter I had believed it, it was, to him, of the most vital and grave importance.”
“Oh, my dear Elizabeth!” John’s eyebrows went up. He gazed at his sister in comical dismay.
“Well?” demanded Elizabeth. “You would.”
“Oh, I daresay,” said John ruefully. “But—well, the man hasn’t a dress suit. Apparently he doesn’t possess such a thing, and Father Maloney swore that it was an entirely unnecessary article in the country. Corin and I dined at Delancey Castle in morning dress to keep him in countenance. And now you—” he broke off.
Contrition, profound and utter contrition, wrote itself on Elizabeth’s face.
“I ought to have guessed there was something momentous in the question,” she said remorsefully, “and yet how could I! How small I must have made him feel!”