“My dear Alicia, what does it matter? My ways of thinking are jerky, you are aware. If you had as many children as poor Mrs. Penton you would have fires in all the rooms.”
“Ah! if—” she said, with a sigh; then, in a tone of impatience, “Poor Mrs. Penton, as you call her, and I—would probably not in any circumstances act in the same way.”
“No, because you are rich Mrs. Penton, my dear. I think you were a little hard upon them, upon the duty of keeping within your income, and all that. I dare say the children have blue little hands and cold noses. If they were mine they should have fires in their rooms whatever my income might be.”
“They would have nothing of the sort—that is, if I were your wife, Gerald,” said Mrs. Penton, with composure. She made a little pause, and then added, with a momentarily quickened breath, “Perhaps under these circumstances I might not have been so.”
He felt the blow; it was a just one, if not perhaps very generous. And if he had been a man of hot temper, or of very sensitive feelings, it would have wounded him. But he was pacific and middle-aged, and knew the absolute inutility of any quarrel. So he answered quietly, “As I can not conceive myself with any other wife in any circumstances, that is not a possibility we need consider.”
Mrs. Penton’s mind went quickly, though her aspect was rigid. She had begged his pardon before these words were half said, with a quick rising color, which showed her shame of the suggestion she had made.
“I was wrong to say it; yet not wrong in what I said. If you had been a poor man, Gerald, your wife would have known how to cut her coat according to her cloth.”
“You mean if she had not been a rich woman. It is ill judging, they say in Scotland, between a full man and a fasting. I have a proverb, you see, as well as you. You were quite right, my dear, to send for that man from the Gobelins; but I would say nothing about my poor neighbors and the coat that is not cut according to the cloth.”
“If you think I am wrong you should say so plainly, Gerald.” The color still wavered a little upon her cheek. She was perhaps not so patient even of implied blame as she thought she was. “It is perhaps wrong,” she added, quickly, “but I should not wonder if I shared without knowing it my father’s feeling about the heir. Oh, you need not say anything; I know it is unreasonable. It is not Edward Penton’s fault that he is the next in the entail. But human creatures are not always reasonable, and they say no man likes to be haunted with the sight of his heir.”
“Poor heir!” said Russell Penton, very softly, almost under his breath.