“Oh, we’re a matchmaking lot, are we?” Felicia’s tone was one of flattering interest. She was arranging a bit of vine that had somehow gotten torn down. She now turned toward me, the picture of innocent surprise.
“You like matchmaking for the fun of the thing—just as a man likes shooting,” I went on. “You’d marry any person to any other person, regardless of age, position or——”
“Sex?” suggested Felicia, politely.
“Suitability,” I amended; “just for the sake of having a wedding.”
“You’re talking now in the manner and tone of a husband,” Felicia accusingly told me. “Anyone who heard your voice afar off would know you were one.” I paid no attention to Felicia’s interruption.
“If I’m not right, kindly tell me if Lydia Massingbyrd wasn’t matchmaking when she got you to ask Almington and little Cecilia Bennett down here; and if you weren’t matchmaking when you consented to ask them.”
“Undoubtedly it’s because Lydia is anxious to arrange a marriage between them she wanted them here.” Felicia’s tone was so guilelessly axiomatic that it made me uncomfortable.
“Has she told you?”
“She’s told me nothing,” Felicia assured me. “If she’d told me her reasons I couldn’t, as she very well knows, have asked them.”
“And that’s why I say,” I concluded, “that I don’t understand women. First Lydia Massingbyrd told me she couldn’t bear Almington. Then she did her little Venus-rising-from-the-sea act for his benefit. And then, I tell you, Felicia, if ever a mortal woman flirted, it was your little golden-locked friend. And, Jove, she was pretty!”