"Oh! of course he'll be unkind to her. She may lay her account for that. But it's the marrying her!" And Kitty's upper-lip curled under a slow disdain.
William laughed out.
"Kitty, really!—you remind me, please, of Miss Jane Taylor:
"'I did not think there could be found—a little heart so hard!'
Mary is thirty; she would like to be married. And why not? She'll give quite as good as she gets."
"Well, she won't get—anything. Geoffrey Cliffe thinks of no one but himself."
Ashe's eyebrows went up.
"Oh, well, all men are selfish—and the women don't mind."
"It depends on how it's done," said Kitty.
Ashe declared that Cliffe was just an ordinary person, "l'homme sensuel moyen"—with a touch of genius. Except for that, no better and no worse than other people. What then?—the world was not made up of persons of enormous virtue like Lord Althorp and Mr. Gladstone. If Mary wanted him for a husband, and could capture him, both, in his opinion, would have pretty nearly got their deserts.