Gabriel tilted his chair and surveyed the clouds.
“A pretty beauty, I suppose,” he said, with cynical facility. Dr. Marjoy, on the contrary, leaned forward and appeared curiously in earnest.
“I call it a damned sin,” he observed, oblivious for the moment of his surroundings.
“I remember that girl well. She is a splendid creature, and I wondered how such an old slut had been able to create such an anomaly. Poor little beggar, she had the airs of a convent child and a queen rolled into one. And to think of that young thing being penned up with a money-crusted sot and a beast of a servant!”
Gabriel’s chair tilted forward abruptly. He sat rigid and nearly bit through his cigar.
“Poor little woman! I suppose she’s only a child. Her surroundings must mar her in the making.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said; “women are queer creatures. Rear one in a regular moral hothouse, and she’ll turn out a scarlet devil. Bring up another in a dirty back garden, and she’ll grow up a regular snow-white seraph. I only saw that girl once, but I’ll swear there’s real grit in her.”
And from that moment the two men seemed to become strangely solemn.
Gabriel left Saltire that afternoon in the Gabingly carriage. He was to stay the night at the castle and to attend a flower-show next day under the auspices of the Gussets. It had already been mooted by the two parents that Gabriel should stand for the constituency at the next election. Old Sir Hercules Dimsdale was a decadent politician and none too eager to continue in the ruck of publicity. The Gusset influence was powerful, and John Strong ambitious. He was too old, he declared, to contest the seat himself; his pride should be perfected in his son.
The dust flew from the wake of the thoroughbreds that whirled the Gusset escutcheon through the streets of Saltire. Ophelia lounged in one corner of the landau, a mass of intricate millinery, her sunshade shadowing her somewhat peevish face. Her sister sat upright in the corresponding corner, with her hat awry and her hands ungloved. Gabriel faced them both on the front seat.
Ophelia was out of temper with the world at large. The parched and dusty weather suited neither her complexion nor her humor. Moreover, the Mince function had been deplorably dull, and Gabriel less the beau chevalier than usual.