[CHAPTER VII.]
"Oh, what a wretched ending! I positively hate to read a book like that. It gives me the blues for a week afterward. I don't see why writers can not have some respect for the nerves of their readers and not upset them with a jar that echoes through every fiber of the body."
Carlita flung the book from her, crossed her pretty feet, and leaning back in her chair, folded her hands behind her head and looked at Olney Winthrop, who was spending one of many evenings with her while the others were at the opera.
He smiled rather gravely.
"I don't see how else it could have ended. She couldn't have married the Disagreeable Man, you know."
"Why not?"
"Oh, who would want to? A sickly, treacherous-tempered beast like that."
"He wasn't anything of the kind. Do you think a 'sickly treacherous-tempered beast' could ever have written that exquisite letter which he tore up? He was only fretted into irascibility by the idiocy of others who had not sense enough to appreciate him. No man could have been as fond of his mother as he was and not be genuinely good. I don't see why he could not have been happy as well as any one else."
"He was treacherous-tempered or he wouldn't have torn up the letter, you see," argued Olney, mildly. "I don't see how she could have cared anyway for a great, gaunt, sickly fellow like that."
"That is like you men. You never seem to think a woman can like any one but a Hercules. For my own part, I perfectly detest the conceited creatures who think they are gods of creation, and let you see it in every word they speak, in love with themselves and unrivaled by any woman in the universe, men like—like—well, Leith Pierrepont for example."