Celia looked interested.
“I am glad you allow that, at any rate,” she said, and glancing at her, the young man almost fancied that she blushed a little. “Of course I think cleverness like Winifred’s a gift, but I can understand ordinary people not looking upon it as if she had a great talent for music, or—or painting. It is easier when you have the one distinct power. Now there is Lady Campion. Your mother seems to think her so talented, but she has not concentrated her talents.”
“No,” said Eric, drily, “she certainly has not.”
“And,” pursued Celia, “she is married. She shouldn’t have married if she wanted to be something.”
“But perhaps she didn’t, or, at least, not what you call ‘something.’ She thinks herself very much ‘something’ or ‘somebody,’ and her marriage has certainly not stood in her light.” Celia hesitated.
“You don’t like Lady Campion?” she said, abruptly.
“Oh yes, I do,” he replied, lightly. “She’s by no means a bad sort of woman,” he went on, hastily. Celia was not the kind of girl to whom it seemed natural to talk slang. “But she wouldn’t have been half what she is if she hadn’t married. The best of her, in my humble opinion, comes out as a wife. I like to see her with her husband. She recognises his superiority.”
“Oh dear,” thought Celia, “what a man’s way of putting it!”
“For he really is a first-rate fellow in his own line. And she is not a genius, though she is—oh yes! she is—clever, though sometimes she makes herself just a little ridiculous.”
Celia did not speak. This was again a new light to her. She felt confused. She had pictured Lady Campion quite differently, somehow, and she felt sure Winifred had done the same, pitying her for having married and thus rashly clipped her wings.