“Oh,” her brother was saying, “when he has money enough, if he still loves her, I guess he’ll marry her.”
“But suppose, Quincy, suppose he stops loving her!”
“Well?”
“Don’t you see, how terrible it would be? What could the poor girl do?”
The boy looked at his sister. She seemed actually suffering. But the wealth of feeling that flowered in her pain had, as usual, gone wrong. He did not care to have his friend’s course criticized. So he attacked his sister, by extolling his friend’s mistress.
“She’s the sort of girl, I suppose,” he answered sharply, “who has other qualifications to recommend her, besides virginity.”
Tears came to Adelaide’s eyes. Quincy was contrite. He jumped up and kissed her. But her tears had made her ugly. Her tender little lids were red. Her hair seemed a trifle colorless. She was three years older than he. Why should he be able to make her weep? He despised her for it. This rôle, he disliked more heartily than being bullied. Could he not find a balance somewhere? or a pleasurable subjection? He thought of Rhoda and of Mrs. Deering. And the tenderness of Adelaide seemed cloying....
Soon, Rhoda came in for tea. And there was Adelaide—perversely at the bottom.
“Well, have you had a nice long chat?” were her first words.
Quincy could not help thinking of her as Mrs. Theodore Cram. Her husband was so important a man. Quincy disliked him so much. And he was so serenely above any feeling, even of dislike, for Quincy. All this hurt. Rhoda was fresh and cool and full as compared to Adelaide, who now looked moist and warm and straggly.