“Its effect,—on what?” he asked.
Mrs. Larrabbee was suddenly, at sea. And she prided herself on a lack of that vagueness generally attributed to her sex.
“On—on everything. On what we were talking about,—the carnival feeling, the levity, on the unbelief of the age. Isn't it because the control has been taken off?”
He saw an opportunity to slip into smoother waters.
“The engine has lost its governor?”
“Exactly!” cried Mrs. Larrabbee. “What a clever simile!”
“It is Mr. Pares,” said Hodder. “Only he was speaking of other symptoms, Socialism, and its opposite, individualism,—not carnivalism.”
“Poor man,” said Mrs. Larrabbee, accepting the new ground as safer, yet with a baffled feeling that Hodder had evaded her once more, “he has had his share of individualism and carnivalism. His son Preston was here last month, and was taken out to the yacht every night in an unspeakable state. And Alison hasn't been what might be called a blessing.”
“She must be unusual,” said the rector, musingly.
“Oh, Alison is a Person. She has become quite the fashion, and has more work than she can possibly attend to. Very few women with her good looks could have done what she has without severe criticism, and something worse, perhaps. The most extraordinary thing about her is her contempt for what her father has gained, and for conventionalities. It always amuses me when I think that she might have been the wife of Gordon Atterbury. The Goddess of Liberty linked to—what?”