"Then I will do nothing."
Colville laughed at this too, and soon after the clergyman appeared. Imogene met him so coldly that Colville felt obliged to make him some amends by a greater show of cordiality than he felt. But he was glad of the effort, for he began to like him as he talked to him; it was easy for him to like people; the young man showed sense and judgment, and if he was a little academic in his mind and manners, Colville tolerantly reflected that some people seemed to be born so, and that he was probably not artificial, as he had once imagined from the ecclesiastical scrupulosity of his dress.
Imogene ebbed away to the piano in the corner of the room, and struck some chords on it. At each stroke the young clergyman, whose eyes had wandered a little toward her from the first, seemed to vibrate in response. The conversation became incoherent before Mrs. Bowen joined them. Then, by a series of illogical processes, the clergyman was standing beside Imogene at the piano, and Mrs. Bowen was sitting beside Colville on the sofa.
"Isn't there to be any Effie, to-night?" he asked.
"No. She has been up too much of late. And I wished to speak with you—about Imogene."
"Yes," said Colville, not very eagerly. At that moment he could have chosen another topic.
"It is time that her mother should have got my letter. In less than a fortnight we ought to have an answer."
"Well?" said Colville, with a strange constriction of the heart.
"Her mother is a person of very strong character; her husband is absorbed in business, and defers to her in everything."
"It isn't an uncommon American situation," said Colville, relieving his tension by this excursion.