“I think she wishes to give him another trial; I hope she will.” Kenton was daunted, and he showed it. “She has got to convince herself, and we have got to let her. She believes, of course, that he’s here on her account, and that flatters her. Why should she be so different from other girls?” Mrs. Kenton demanded of the angry protest in her husband’s eye.
His spirit fell, and he said, “I only wish she were more like them.”
“Well, then, she is just as headstrong and as silly, when it comes to a thing like this. Our only hope is to let her have her own way.”
“Do you suppose he cares for her, after all?”
Mrs. Kenton was silent, as if in exhaustive self-question. Then she answered: “No, I don’t in that way. But he believes he can get her.”
“Then, Sarah, I think we have a duty to the poor child. You must tell her what you have told me.”
Mrs. Kenton smiled rather bitterly, in recognition of the fact that the performance of their common duty must fall wholly to her. But she merely said: “There is no need of my telling her. She knows it already.”
“And she would take him in spite of knowing that he didn’t really care for her?”
“I don’t say that. She wouldn’t own it to herself.”
“And what are you going to do?”