“Ah where?” said Huckaby, to whom as Mrs. Fontaine’s childhood friend this talk had been mainly addressed.
Lady Louisa sighed sentimentally. She was an old maid, the seventh of eleven daughters of an impecunious Irish earl now defunct. Her face, such as it was, had been her fortune, and it had attracted no suitors.
“Not that she isn’t very much admired. She knows hundreds of nice men, and I’m sure heaps of them want to marry her; but, no. She likes them as friends. As a husband she wants something more. The modern man is so material and unintellectual, don’t you think so?”
This Diana (with a touch of Minerva) among widows came up, swinging the little bag of which she had gone in search.
“I’m sure Lady Louisa has been talking about me,” she laughed.
“She has not been taking away your character. I assure you,” said Quixtus.
“I know. She has been giving me one. And the worst of it is, I have to live up to it—or at least try. I suppose it’s always worth while having an ideal before one, though it may be somebody else’s.”
“You believe in an ideal of goodness?” asked Quixtus.
She raised her dreamy eyes to his and looked at him candidly.
“Why, yes, don’t you?”