"Oh, it isn't that." She walked over to the writing-table and came back with a sheet of paper containing the names of the following day's party. "He wants to marry one of them, and I want him to marry the other."
I glanced at the list, and "Miss Hunter-Oakleigh" caught my eye.
"Violet's one," I said. Then I observed another name and handed the sheet back to Amy. "Thanks. I have seen indications."
Amy fretted the paper with her fingers.
"I haven't a word against Sonia," she said. "If Jim marries her, I—all of us, mother and I and everybody—shall try to make a success of it." She stopped, and shook her head with misgiving. "I'm sure it's a mistake, though. She's got very little heart, and Jim's nothing like brutal enough to keep her in order. And I'm afraid he'll find she's got nothing but her looks. That's what's attracted him. Violet's pretty enough, Heaven knows, but Sonia——" She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. "I can understand any man being mad about her. And she knows it, and expects men to go mad about her. I don't think she'll be content with one man's devotion. Someone will come along.... George, I hate to talk like this, but a lioness and her cub aren't in it with me where Jim's concerned. He and mother are all I've got in the world, and if anyone came along and spoiled his life ... I should be quite capable of murder."
"Who invited Violet?" I asked. Before leaving London I had dined with her and her young brother. She had said nothing about coming to Scotland.
"I did," Amy answered. "I wrote to her from Baden-Baden."
"I suppose she would marry Jim?"
"That's one of the questions you musn't put to a woman," Amy answered, with a laugh.
The following day brought Violet and the Daintons, as well as a number of other people in whom I was not so immediately interested.