“Oh, but you should,” he went on. “It’s well worth staying there, anyhow, once a year. They make one very comfortable, and the women are ravishing.”
“The women?” Henry thought to himself, with disgust. “What could any woman see in you?” His tolerance was rapidly becoming exhausted, but he could not help liking Rodney nevertheless, and this appeared to him strange, for he was fastidious, and such words in another mouth would have condemned the speaker irreparably. He began, in short, to wonder what kind of creature this man who was to marry his cousin might be. Could any one, except a rather singular character, afford to be so ridiculously vain?
“I don’t think I should get on in that society,” he replied. “I don’t think I should know what to say to Lady Rose if I met her.”
“I don’t find any difficulty,” Rodney chuckled. “You talk to them about their children, if they have any, or their accomplishments—painting, gardening, poetry—they’re so delightfully sympathetic. Seriously, you know I think a woman’s opinion of one’s poetry is always worth having. Don’t ask them for their reasons. Just ask them for their feelings. Katharine, for example—”
“Katharine,” said Henry, with an emphasis upon the name, almost as if he resented Rodney’s use of it, “Katharine is very unlike most women.”
“Quite,” Rodney agreed. “She is—” He seemed about to describe her, and he hesitated for a long time. “She’s looking very well,” he stated, or rather almost inquired, in a different tone from that in which he had been speaking. Henry bent his head.
“But, as a family, you’re given to moods, eh?”
“Not Katharine,” said Henry, with decision.
“Not Katharine,” Rodney repeated, as if he weighed the meaning of the words. “No, perhaps you’re right. But her engagement has changed her. Naturally,” he added, “one would expect that to be so.” He waited for Henry to confirm this statement, but Henry remained silent.
“Katharine has had a difficult life, in some ways,” he continued. “I expect that marriage will be good for her. She has great powers.”
“Yes—but now what direction d’you think they take?”
Rodney had completely dropped his pose as a man of the world, and seemed to be asking Henry to help him in a difficulty.