“Isn't it delightful,” asked Mrs. Brinkley, following them with her eyes, “to see the charm that gay young fellow has for that serious girl? She looked at him while he was dancing as if she couldn't take her eyes off him, and she followed him as if he drew her by an invisible spell. Not that spells are ever visible,” she added, saving herself. “Though this one seems to be,” she added further, again saving herself.
“Do you really think so?” pleaded Miss Cotton.
“Well, I say so, whatever I think. And I'm not going to be caught up on the tenter-hooks of conscience as to all my meanings, Miss Cotton. I don't know them all. But I'm not one of the Aliceolaters, you know.”
“No; of course not. But shouldn't you—Don't you think it would be a great pity—She's so superior, so very uncommon in every way, that it hardly seems—Ah, I should so like to see some one really fine—not a coarse fibre in him, don't you know. Not that Mr. Mavering's coarse. But beside her he does seem so light!”
“Perhaps that's the reason she likes him.”
“No, no! I can't believe that. She must see more in him than we can.”
“I dare say she thinks she does. At any rate, it's a perfectly evident case on both sides; and the frank way he's followed her up here, and devoted himself to her, as if—well, not as if she were the only girl in the world, but incomparably the best—is certainly not common.”
“No,” sighed Miss Cotton, glad to admit it; “that's beautiful.”