“Do you know,” said Etta, “I used to be rather afraid of him.”
“Any fool could see that,” said Clementina.
“Did you guess?” This with wide-open cornflower eyes.
“Look at your portrait and you’ll see,” said Clementina, mindful of the avalanche of memories which the portrait of Tommy Burgrave’s rough-and-ready criticism of the bullet-headed young man had started on its overwhelming career. “Have you ever looked at it?”
“Of course I have.”
“To look at a thing and to see it,” remarked Clementina, “are two entirely different propositions. For instance, you looked at that young man, but you didn’t see him. Yet your soul saw him and was afraid. Your father too—I can’t understand what he was about when he consented to the engagement.”
“Captain Hilyard’s father and he were old mess-mates,” said Etta.
“Old messmakers!” snapped Clementina. “And what made you accept him?”
Etta looked mournful. “I don’t know.”
“The next time you engage yourself to a young man, just be sure that you do know. I suppose this one said, ‘Dilly, dilly, come and be killed,’ and you went like the foolish little geese in the nursery rhyme.”