"What a nice girl that little Ruth has grown!"
"Awfully pretty girl," returns Dorian, carelessly.
"Yes,"--gravely,--"very pretty; and I think--I hope--upright, as she is beautiful. Poor child, hers seems to me a very desolate lot. Far too well educated to associate with those of her own class, she is still cut off by the laws of caste from mixing with those above her. She has no friends, no mother, no sister, to love and sympathize with her."
"My dear Arthur, how you do agonize yourself!" says Dorian. "She has her father, and about as comfortable a time altogether as I know of."
"She reminds me of some lowly wayside flower," goes on the old man, musingly, heedless of the brilliant interlude, "raising its little head sadly among gay garden-plants that care not for her, whilst beyond the hedge that bounds her garden she can watch her own species grow and flourish in wild luxuriance. Her life can scarcely be called happy. There must always be a want, a craving for what can never be obtained. Surely the one that could bring sorrow to that pure heart, or tears to those gentle eyes, should be----"
"Asphyxiated," puts in Dorian, idly. He yawns languidly and pulls the head off a tall dandelion, that adorns the wayside, in a somewhat desultory fashion. The color in the older man's cheeks grows a shade deeper, and a gesture, as full of impatience as of displeasure, escapes him.
"There are some subjects," he says, with calm severity, "that it would be well to place beyond the reach of ridicule."
"Am I one of them?" says Dorian, lightly. Then, glancing at his uncle's face, he checks himself, and goes on quickly. "I beg your pardon, I'm sure. I have been saying something unlucky, as usual. Of course I agree with you on all points, Arthur, and think the man who could wilfully bring a blush to Ruth Annersley's cheek neither more nor less than a blackguard _pur et simple_. By the by, that last little homely phrase comes in badly there, doesn't it? Rather out of keeping with the vituperative noun, eh!"
"Rather," returns Sartoris, shortly. He drops his nephew's arm, and walks on in silence. As a rule, Dorian's careless humor suits him; it amuses and adds a piquancy to a life that without it (now that Dorian's society has become indispensable to him) would prove "flat, stale, and unprofitable." But to-day, he hardly knows why,--or, perhaps, hardly dares to know why,--his nephew's easy light-heartedness jars upon him, vexing him sorely.