“About you, and your approaching marriage.”
“I am sure you said nothing that was not kind, but I wish to Heaven you would not discuss my affairs with a stranger,” said Vansittart, with some warmth.
“Mr. Sefton is not a stranger. Your father and his father were very good friends. He is your sister’s most influential neighbour, and they are on the friendliest terms. Why should you call him a stranger?”
“Because I don’t like him, mother; and because I wish never to feel myself on any other footing with him.”
“And yet he likes you.”
“Does he? I am a very bad judge of humanity if my dislike of Sefton is not heartily reciprocated by Sefton’s dislike of me. And no doubt the more he dislikes me the more he will assure other people—my kindred especially—that he likes me. You are too straight yourself, mother, in every thought and purpose, to understand the Seftonian mind. It is the kind of intellect which always works crookedly. He admired Eve Marchant, allowed his admiration to be patent to everybody, and yet was not man enough to try to win her for his wife.”
“He had not your courage, Jack, in facing unpleasant surroundings and disagreeable antecedents.”
“He had not manhood enough to marry for love. That is what you mean, mother. He was quite willing to compromise an innocent and pure-minded girl, by attentions which he would not have dared to offer to a girl with a watchful father or mother.”
“My dear Jack, you exaggerate Mr. Sefton’s attentions. He assured me that his chief interest in Eve arose from his old companionship with her brother, with whom he was on very intimate terms until the unhappy young man turned out an irretrievable scamp.”
Vansittart winced at the phrase. It is not an agreeable thing for a man to be told that his future brother-in-law, the brother whom his future wife adores, is irretrievable.