“That pallor is stunning,” said a big, ruddy youth, with sunburn on his neck and forehead.
“It isn't healthy,” said Fleetwood.
“It attracts me,” persisted the ruddy young man, voicing naively that curious truth concerning the attraction that disease so often exerts on health—the strange curiosity the normal has for the sub-normal—that fascination of the wholesome for the unhealthy. It is, perhaps, more curiosity than anything, unless, deep hidden under the normal, there lie one single, perverted nerve.
Sylvia, passing the hall, glanced in through the gun-room door with an absentminded smile at the men and their laughing greeting, as they rose with uplifted glasses to salute her.
“The sweetest of all,” observed a man, disconsolately emptying his glass. “Oh irony! What a marriage!”
“Do you know any girl who would not change places with her?” asked another.
Every man there insisted that he knew one girl at least who would not exchange Sylvia's future for her own. That was very nice of them; it is to be hoped they believed it. Some of them did—for the moment, anyhow. Then Alderdene, blinking furiously, emitted one of his ear-racking laughs; and everybody, as usual, laughed too.
“You damned cynic,” observed Voucher affectionately.
“Somebody,” said Fleetwood, “insists that she doubled up poor Siward.”
“She never met Siward until she was engaged to Howard,” remarked Voucher.