“Well, that's right! as my father says. How's she beautiful?”
“That's difficult to tell. It's rather a superb sort of style; and—What did you really use to think of your friend?” Atherton broke off to ask.
“Who? Hubbard?”
“Yes.”
“He was a poor, cheap sort of a creature. Deplorably smart, and regrettably handsome. A fellow that assimilated everything to a certain extent, and nothing thoroughly. A fellow with no more moral nature than a base-ball The sort of chap you'd expect to find, the next time you met him, in Congress or the house of correction.”
“Yes, that accounts for it,” said Atherton, thoughtfully.
“Accounts for what?”
“The sort of look she had. A look as if she were naturally above him, and had somehow fascinated herself with him, and were worshipping him in some sort of illusion.”
“Doesn't that sound a little like refining upon the facts? Recollect: I've never seen her, and I don't say you're wrong.”
“I'm not sure I'm not, though. I talked with her, and found her nothing more than honest and sensible and good; simple in her traditions, of course, and countrified yet, in her ideas, with a tendency to the intensely practical. I don't see why she mightn't very well be his wife. I suppose every woman hoodwinks herself about her husband in some degree.”