“It’s so in the smallest thing. If you’re choosing a thing for her, and
she likes another, she lets you feel it at once. I don’t mean that she’s
rude about it, but she seems to set herself so square across the way, and
you come up with a kind of bump against her. I don’t think that’s very
feminine. That’s what I mean by mannish. You always know where to find
her.”
I don’t know why this criticism should have amused me so much, but I
began to laugh quite uncontrollably, and I laughed on and on. Mrs. March
kept her temper with me admirably. When I was quiet again, she said—
“Mrs. Deering is a person that wins your heart at once; she has that
appealing quality. You can see that she’s cowed by her husband, though
he means to be kind to her; and yet you may be sure she gets round him,
and has her own way all the time. I know it was her idea to have him go
home and leave them here, and of course she made him think it was his.
She saw that as long as he was here, and anxious to get back to his
‘stock,’ there was no hope of giving Miss Gage the sort of chance she
came for, and so she determined to manage it. At the same time, you can
see that she is true as steel, and would abhor anything like deceit worse
than the pest.”
“I see; and that is why you dislike Miss Gage?”
“Dislike her? No, I don’t dislike her; but she is disappointing. If she
were a plain girl her plain-mindedness would be all right; it would be
amusing; she would turn it to account and make it seem humorous. But it
doesn’t seem to go with her beauty; it takes away from that—I don’t know
how to express it exactly.”
“You mean that she has no charm.”
“No; I don’t mean that at all. She has a great deal of charm of a
certain kind, but it’s a very peculiar kind. After all, the truth is the
truth, Basil, isn’t it?”
“It is sometimes, my dear,” I assented.
“And the truth has its charm, even when it’s too blunt.”
“Ah, I’m not so sure of that.”
“Yes—yes, it has. You mustn’t say so, Basil, or I shall lose all my
faith in you. If I couldn’t trust you, I don’t know what I should do.”
“What are you after now, Isabel?”
“I am not after anything. I want you to go round to all the hotels and
see if there is not some young man you know at one of them. There surely
must be.”
“Would one young man be enough?”
“If he were attentive enough, he would be. One young man is as good as a
thousand if the girl is the right kind.”
“But you have just been implying that Miss Gage is cold and selfish and
greedy. Shall I go round exploring hotel registers for a victim to such
a divinity as that?”
“No; you needn’t go till I have had a talk with her. I am not sure she
is worth it; I am not sure that I want to do a single thing for her.”