One thing he decided during the train journey home: He would make himself agreeable when he got there. If he did not do that, he could not face Miss Le Breton. This was curious, as she could know nothing about it. But somehow he felt that he must improve himself, if he were to come into that girl’s presence—that girl! Dan’s “Madonna!”—and Dan was invited to stay there. Dan was going.
Happy Dan!
Philip began to pity himself as that most unhappy of beings—the man who must stand aside and look upon another man’s joy. Philip liked Dan—genuinely liked him. Dan had always been a reliable friend. He had put up with moroseness and ill-humor. He had shown ill-deserved affection towards a man few liked, and many disliked. Good old Dan! but Philip envied him all the same.
Philip was destined to see more of Aimée Le Breton than he had hoped for. Mrs. Barrimore had said to Uncle Robert after the kindness Alvin and Mrs. Le Breton had shown to her boy, “I ought to call on them, Robert,” and he had thoroughly agreed.
So, while Philip had been at Brighton, Mrs. Barrimore and Mr. Burns had driven over to Gissing and made a formal call at the White House, and had come back nearly as much in love with Aimée Le Breton as Dan was.
“If Eweretta were like Miss Le Breton—as we hear she was,” Mrs. Barrimore had said to her brother on the way home, “I no longer wonder that Philip was so much in love. She is adorable.”
In which sentiment Uncle Robert had agreed. He even went so far as to say she had inspired a lyric which he would write down when he got home.
Neither Mrs. Barrimore nor Uncle Robert had seen Eweretta during that visit to London with her father when Philip had fallen in love and become engaged (of course, without consulting them!).
Now, having seen what Eweretta had been like, both the mother and the uncle entirely exonerated Philip for the sudden engagement for which at the time they had mildly blamed him.
“I should have done it myself at Philip’s age,” Uncle Robert had confessed.