It was Waring now who hesitated, and did not know how to reply. “We!” he said. “To tell the truth, I had not thought of it. Frances was always quite willing to stay at home.”
“But I am not Frances, papa.”
“I beg your pardon, my dear; that is quite true. Of course I never supposed so. You understand that for myself I prefer always not to be disturbed—to go on as I am. But you, a young lady fresh from society—— Had I supposed that you cared for the Durants, for instance, I should have thought of some way of making up for their absence; but I thought, on the whole, you would prefer their absence.”
“That has nothing to do with it,” said Constance. “I don’t care for the individuals—they are all rather bores. Captain Gaunt,” she added, resolutely, introducing the name with determination, “became very much of a bore before he went away. But the thing is to have nobody—nobody! One has to put up with bores very often; but to have nobody, actually not a soul! The circumstances are quite unprecedented.”
There was something in her air as she said this which amused her father. It was the air of a social philosopher brought to a pause in the face of an unimagined dilemma, rather than of a young lady stranded upon a desert shore where no society was to be found.
“No doubt,” he said, “you never knew anything of the kind before.”
“Never,” said Constance, with warmth. “People who are a nuisance, often enough; but nobody, never before.”
“I prefer nobody,” said her father.
She raised her eyes to him, as if he were one of the problems to which, for the first time, her attention was seriously called. “Perhaps,” she said; “but then you are not in a natural condition, papa—no more than a hermit in the desert, who has forsworn society altogether.”
“Allowing that I am abnormal, Constance, for the argument’s sake——”