“But it is well known,” she said eagerly, and there was something touching in the artless anxiety to be thought much of which she revealed by her words, “that the slower a nature is to develop, the richer the nature. Youths and girls who are men and women before they come of age are nobodies by the time that backward people have shown their full compass.”
“Yes,” said Knight thoughtfully. “There is really something in that remark. But at the risk of offence I must remind you that you there take it for granted that the woman behind her time at a given age has not reached the end of her tether. Her backwardness may be not because she is slow to develop, but because she soon exhausted her capacity for developing.”
Elfride looked disappointed. By this time they were indoors. Mrs. Swancourt, to whom match-making by any honest means was meat and drink, had now a little scheme of that nature concerning this pair. The morning-room, in which they both expected to find her, was empty; the old lady having, for the above reason, vacated it by the second door as they entered by the first.
Knight went to the chimney-piece, and carelessly surveyed two portraits on ivory.
“Though these pink ladies had very rudimentary features, judging by what I see here,” he observed, “they had unquestionably beautiful heads of hair.”
“Yes; and that is everything,” said Elfride, possibly conscious of her own, possibly not.
“Not everything; though a great deal, certainly.”
“Which colour do you like best?” she ventured to ask.
“More depends on its abundance than on its colour.”
“Abundances being equal, may I inquire your favourite colour?”