“As it is,” she remarked with unexpected spirit.
Camperdown scowled at her. “If you don’t marry, young lady, twenty years hence you’ll be a bad-tempered, dried-up, withered dame that no man will want to look at.”
Vivienne shrugged her beautiful shoulders.
“See what a beast I am,” he went on; “all because I didn’t marry. I’m too selfish to live—come now, don’t throw me pretty glances. You can’t cajole me. I say a man or a woman who remains unmarried without just cause for doing so, is a detestable egotist.”
Vivienne bit her lip and cast a glance in the direction of Mascerene, who was patiently enduring every insult from a passing quarrelsome dog.
“Let him alone, and think about Stanton,” said Camperdown impatiently. “He fell in love, as I said. See him here overcome by the discovery: ‘Merciful heavens, haven’t I suffered enough without having a woman flung into my life, or rather, not a woman, a full-grown creature, but a slender reed of a girl?’ I am sure you are sorry for him, Miss Delavigne,” turning suddenly and subjecting her composed features to an intense scrutiny.
“I am always sorry when a person suffering happens to be one whom I esteem.”
“It is abominable that Stanton should have led so tortured a life,” continued the physician; “he has been martyrizing ever since his mother died.”
“Unfortunate man!”
“But he’s getting over it here,” unfolding another bit of paper. “He’s thinking that it isn’t such a bad thing after all that his adored one is just eighteen years younger than himself.”