"But Elise is thought very pretty," Mrs. Lethbury insisted.
"I can't help that," said Lethbury doggedly.
He saw a faint light in his wife's eyes; but she remarked
carelessly: "Mr. Budd would be a very good match for Elise."
Lethbury could hardly repress a chuckle: he was so exquisitely aware
that she was trying to propitiate the gods.
For a few weeks neither said a word; then Mrs. Lethbury once more
reverted to the subject.
"It is a month since Elise went abroad," she said.
"Is it?"
"And Mr. Budd seems to come here just as often--"
"Ah," said Lethbury with heroic indifference; and his wife hastily
changed the subject.
Mr. Winstanley Budd was a young man who suffered from an excess of
manner. Politeness gushed from him in the driest seasons. He was
always performing feats of drawing-room chivalry, and the approach
of the most unobtrusive female threw him into attitudes which
endangered the furniture. His features, being of the cherubic order,
did not lend themselves to this role; but there were moments when he
appeared to dominate them, to force them into compliance with an
aquiline ideal. The range of Mr. Budd's social benevolence made its
object hard to distinguish. He spread his cloak so indiscriminately
that one could not always interpret the gesture, and Jane's
impassive manner had the effect of increasing his demonstrations:
she threw him into paroxysms of politeness.
At first he filled the house with his amenities; but gradually it
became apparent that his most dazzling effects were directed
exclusively to Jane.
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