"What about?"
"I thought I understood you to say that, in your opinion, Gwen had got it into her head that...."
"Oh dear!... There—never mind!—go on." She considered her husband a prolix Earl, sometimes.
"... That the accident was our fault, and that it was her duty to make it up to him."
"Of course she has. What did you suppose?"
"I supposed she might have—a—fallen in love with him. I thought you thought so, too, from what you said."
"My dear Alexander, shall I never make you understand?" Her ladyship only used the long inconvenient name to emphasize rhetoric, which she did also in this instance by making every note staccato. "Gwen, has, fallen, in, love, with, Mr. Torrens, because, we, did it? Now do you see?"
"She has a—mixture of motives, in fact?"
"Absolutely none whatever! She's over head and ears in love with him because his eyes are out. No other reason in life! What earthly good do you think the child thinks she could do him if she didn't love him? Men will never understand girls if they live till Doomsday."
The Earl did not grapple with the problems this suggested; but reflected, while her ladyship waited explicitly. At last he said:—"It certainly appears to me that if Gwen's ... predilection for this man depends in any degree on a mistaken conviction of duty, the only course open to us is to—to temporise—to deprecate rash actions and undertakings. Under the circumstances it would be impossible to condemn or find fault with either. It is perfectly inconceivable that poor Torrens—should have—should have taken any initiative...."