Her despair escaped
in the moan, "What _is_ it you ask me?"
"To talk to her."
"Talk to her?"
"Show her--tell her--make her understand that the paper has always
been a thing outside your life--that hasn't touched you--that
needn't touch _her_. Only, let her hear you--watch you--be with
you--she'll see...she can't help seeing..."
His mother faltered. "But if she's given you her reasons--?"
"Let her give them to you! If she can--when she sees you...." His
impatient hand again displaced the wrestler. "I care abominably," he
confessed.
II
On the Fenno threshold a sudden sense of the futility of the attempt
had almost driven Mrs. Quentin back to her carriage; but the door
was already opening, and a parlor-maid who believed that Miss Fenno
was in led the way to the depressing drawing-room. It was the kind
of room in which no member of the family is likely to be found
except after dinner or after death. The chairs and tables looked
like poor relations who had repaid their keep by a long career of
grudging usefulness: they seemed banded together against intruders
in a sullen conspiracy of discomfort. Mrs. Quentin, keenly
susceptible to such influences, read failure in every angle of the
upholstery. She was incapable of the vulgar error of thinking that
Hope Fenno might be induced to marry Alan for his money; but between
this assumption and the inference that the girl's imagination might
be touched by the finer possibilities of wealth, good taste admitted
a distinction.
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