Etta took up a thread of pink silk, and then decided for pale blue.
“I don’t know that engagements ever surprise me,” she replied. “If men can afford to marry, and there is no other impediment, they generally do; and if they are attractive to women, they always do.”
“You mean if women attract them?” he interjected.
“My dear boy,” said his sister, moving the frame slightly more under the electric light, “it never does to confuse cause and effect. If women want to marry a man, he marries. In your case, of course, there was some protection provided you remained at home; the rest was merely a question of time.”
Horace did not like this way of putting the matter at all; in the first place, it was an insult to Edith, and in the second place it was an insult to his own intelligence. He had thought the thing out so often, and had acted so entirely as a free agent; and yet the more emphasis he laid on this fact, the more plainly he saw the pleasant, unconvinced smile upon his sister’s face; besides, it wasn’t the point of the discussion; they seemed strangely incapable of reaching the point of the discussion.
“I am sure when you see Edith,” he said at last, “you will feel that I have made a most desirable choice.” He tried to put it as baldly as possible, for he did not wish Etta to think he had been swayed by glamour.
“Walton!” said his sister slowly: “who are the Waltons? Has the yellow silk skein fallen at your feet, Horace?”
“I don’t know that they are anybody in particular,” said Horace, vaguely uncomfortable; “she’s an orphan, you know, and Lady Walton, her aunt, is an extremely clever, amusing woman. Edith has not gone in for Society much, she’s so fond of travel, and her aunt’s rather an invalid, so I imagine they have always lived extremely quietly.”
“I can’t remember,” said Etta, “whether it was biscuits or soap the Lindleys told me; perhaps it was soap.”
“What was soap?” said Horace, now thoroughly irritated.