"Oh, some time next week, I hope," he answered comfortably.
Mrs. Mynors looked triumphant. She went out of the room with the doctor, and Virginia was left to her own reflections.
"The caprice of a perverted mind!" That phrase stuck in her head. It seemed to her that it did just exactly describe Gaunt's conduct. It is possible, however, that a perverted mind may be put right again, if it encounters some agency sufficiently powerful. When she was in town Dr. Danby had spoken to her of her husband.
"He was one of the most interesting boys I ever saw," had been his verdict. "I was very sorry for him. He was thoroughly mishandled, misunderstood, by the old ladies, his great-aunts, who were all the kith and kin he had."
(I can believe anything of them. They put the Chippendale in the attic, and furnished their dining-room in horsehair and mahogany, had been Virginia's inward comment.)
"I saw him several times during his university period. The authorities there thought as highly of him as I did. Then came the débâcle. Some girl, upon whom he fixed all his heart, failed him. He could not stand it. The weak spot in his nature was touched—his fatal tendency to concentrate violently upon one object. He went all to pieces for a while—dashed off abroad—and I lost touch with him."
It seemed to the girl, who revolved this information in her mind, that her own duty lay clear. If she could but overcome his prejudice, his perverted idea of her, might she not do something after all towards making him happy?
Mims had once praised her for her inveterate habit of doing her duty. Easy enough had duty been when it was a case of Pansy and Tony. Now because duty was formidable and difficult, was she to shrink from it? She covered her face with her hands, she stopped her ears against an imaginary voice. She would go back—she must go back.
But if Gerald joined in the argument, would she be able to resist?
Well she knew her mother, and she was positive that, being on such terms of confidence as she had lately established with young Rosenberg, she would tell him what she had inadvertently learned, of the true inwardness of Virginia's marriage. At the mere thought the girl writhed.