“You seem very fond of Marguerite de Plenhöel?” Laurence remarked. “Everybody I know appears to have some weakness or other for her, and yet she is really nothing extraordinary!”
“Perhaps that might explain it,” he said. “You see, she is simplicity itself, without pose of any sort, but also very bright and clever; also she is gay and brave—Heaven help her!”
“If she is all that, why should Heaven need to interfere?”
Salvières was again thoughtfully twisting his mustache, Decidedly this new relative of his was not improving on better acquaintance. Unhappy Basil! When the scales—thick as window-shutters he was forced to believe—fell from his eyes, what would he do?
“Heaven,” he said, slowly, “must always interfere with its own, although God forbid that I should attempt to explain to you the ways of Providence.”
“You evidently consider Marguerite an angel, then?” Laurence queried, in an odd voice.
“Oh, by no means! She has faults, great faults, not the least of them being her over-confidence in others.”
“You know her very well, I suppose?”
“As well as one knows a creature one has carried about in one’s arms before it could walk,” he acquiesced.
“As long as that? I heard that you were personally related to her, but not very closely.”