“Oh, yes, I know, the nice girl with dark eyes—tragic eyes, tragic eyes set in a calm face. Nature plays curious tricks, doesn’t she?”
“Yes—I suppose she does. She is my niece.”
“The girl with the tragic eyes—that accounts for it, then.”
“No—no—the child.”
“A delightful child.”
That started Marcus—off he went. It was astonishing how much he found to say about Shan’t. From her getting up in the morning to her going to bed at night: he told it all—and the woman in the bath-chair listened with gentle amusement. Here was a father utterly wasted. This man should marry: but not the girl with tragic, happy, big brown eyes. She mustn’t marry a man who would criticize her and be ashamed of her connections. This man was not a big enough man to marry her. He must marry one of his set; who knew what to say and when to say it, and how to say it: who would have things social at her finger-tips. The woman in the bath-chair liked the girl with brown eyes, but she saw at a glance what background should be hers. She settled her in her home with a devoted husband. They would furnish in suites. The girl would have her embroidered tea-cosy: that was certain and a table centre of Indian embroidery—it might be worked in gold thread: it might be worked in green beetles. She would wear—? She would dress in the height of the fashion. This was delightful. The elderly woman loved making up stories about people. But it didn’t amuse Marcus; he didn’t know what she was smiling at.
“What amuses you?” he asked.
“So much—nearly everything! In fact everything except the tragedies of life—and those often might have been avoided if some one had laughed at the right moment.”
“The difficulty is to know the right moment,” said Marcus. “What amused you?”
She told him: described the home she had chosen for the girl. Marcus said she was very unkind. Why unkind? she wanted to know. She was praising the girl, if only he could see it. That was why he could never marry a girl like that: he could never see how delightful, how wholesome, how splendid she was.