“You silly lad!” said the Doctor. “You simpleton! You think you never had an enemy in your life, and feel as if this would be something new. I wonder if I ought to enlighten you? You remember your father, Edgar? Which was he, enemy or friend?”
“Dr. Somers,” said Edgar, gravely, “I have already told you that nothing shall induce me to discuss my father.”
Dr. Somers said “Humph!” with sudden confusion, and filled himself out a large bumper of wine and seltzer water. “That shows a fine disposition on your part,” he said; “but whether it is safe or expedient to ignore such things you must judge for yourself. Perhaps I know more about it than you do, and it seems to me you have had an enemy or two. But, anyhow, take care of Arthur Arden, for he will be the worst.”
“I don’t think I am afraid.”
“No; I don’t suppose you are,” said the Doctor, looking at him between two puffs of his cigar; “but whether that is wise or not is a different matter. Why does Clare hate him? Why, I suppose, because he once made love to her, and offered ‘his hand,’ as people say, with nothing in it. Was not that enough?”
“Surely not enough to make her hate him,” said Edgar, “but enough to make it horribly embarrassing. Was that all? Don’t people say it is the highest compliment, &c. I am sure I have read something like that in books.”
“And so have I,” said the Doctor; “and I suppose it is the highest compliment, &c. Women don’t generally hate us because we love them, or think we love them. Clare has been petted and spoiled all her life. But still Arthur Arden is a handsome fellow——”
While Dr. Somers went on thus philosophically, Edgar winced and shifted about in his chair. He was not susceptible about himself, but he was intensely sensitive in respect to his sister. Clare was not to him an abstract woman, to be discussed by general rules, but an individual whom he would fain have drawn curtains of profoundest respect about, and veiled from every vulgar gaze. There is no doubt that this is one of the first primitive instincts of love. The Turk is the truest symbol of humanity so far, and there is no man, worth calling a man, who would not be satisfied in his inmost heart if he could shut up his womankind from every rash look or doubtful comment. Edgar beat a tune on the table with his fingers, blew clouds of smoke about him in his restlessness, shuffled and swayed himself about in his chair; but what could he do to stop the disquisitions of the man who had known Clare all her life?
“Arthur Arden is a handsome fellow, and a clever fellow,” continued Dr. Somers. “If he had impressed a girl’s imagination, I for one should not have been surprised. My own theory is that he did, and that it was her liking for him, combined with her sense of his enmity to you——”
“Good heavens! what has that to do with it?” cried Edgar, thankful of some means of expressing his impatience. “How could he show enmity to me when he had never seen me? and what did it matter if he had? That has nothing to do with Clare.”