"Not a great deal—he's quite laconic, as usual. But what little he says is very much to the point. He says he had supposed a daughter of his would have more sense. However, since she hasn't, he can merely state that he withholds his consent to the match. Isabel's of age, and if she chooses to marry Charlie she can do so, but without approval or assistance from her father."
"Meaning," said Smith, "an unpleasant codicil in the paternal last will and testament, providing that instead of a previous bequest, his beloved daughter be paid two hundred dollars a month as long as she lives. What does Wilkinson say to Mr. Hurd's attitude? One might gather that it would make a certain difference with him, for, although Miss Hurd is certainly very attractive, I somehow gained the general impression that your friend Charlie had a very clear eye on the main chance."
"Isabel doesn't seem a bit disturbed, for I think she anticipated her father's point of view; and as for Charlie, seeing that his chief source of income at present depends wholly on the favor of a man who is angry enough to disinherit his daughter for wanting to marry him—well, one would expect that Charlie would be depressed, or at least thoughtful. But not at all. He's in the highest of spirits, and says that the mere rumor that he is going to marry into the Hurd family will establish a line of credit good enough to last ten years."
"But really—isn't the young man a bit mercurial?"
"Oh, awfully! To tell the truth, I was a little surprised when Isabel took him, for under her society manner she's very sensible and self-controlled. And yet Charlie's very attractive and amusing and really clever at times, and she is just the kind of girl that ought to take hold of him and tactfully make him amount to something. She'll be the best thing in the world for him."
"I wonder why a man almost always falls in love either with a girl who is just the sort or not at all the sort he should have selected. It's always one or the other—never any middle course. I wonder what kind of girl you would say was just the sort for me."
"One would have to know a man extremely well to venture a suggestion on such a point, don't you think?" Miss Maitland parried.
"Perhaps," Smith agreed. "And after all, since I can't myself say exactly what sort of girl would be most perfectly suited to my special peculiarities, it would be a little unreasonable to expect any one else to do so."
His companion gave a suppressed sigh of relief that a subject which might have developed elements of high hazard seemed now to be avoided. She was not quite sure what she thought of the man before her, but she knew that he seemed strong and vital and sincere. From Mr. Osgood she had learned that other people of considerable discrimination held a like opinion.
It was quite strange. Superficially, introspection would have led her to believe that she would have been attracted by some one nearer to her own enthusiasms, her own breeding, her own ideals. This young man was alien to her in birth, and his education had been along totally different lines, and logically they should not have been in sympathy one with the other, for he made her ideals seem somehow bloodless and her enthusiasms sterile and hardly worth while. It was certainly perplexing, for after three months in which she had not seen him, the attraction he exercised upon her had not noticeably lessened. She oddly felt that it would have been more considerate in Smith had he reappeared a little weaker and less vivid than her remembrance of him.