Her eyes
seemed doubting at that moment whether or no she loved him who stood
there touching that other mistress of his thoughts--that other mistress
with whom he spent so many evening hours. The little green-baize cover
fell. Cecilia said suddenly:
"Stephen, I feel as if I must tell Father where that girl is!"
Stephen turned.
"My dear child," he answered in his special voice, which, like
champagne, seemed to have been dried by artifice, "you don't want to
reopen the whole thing?"
"But I can see he really is upset about it; he's looking so awfully
white and thin."
"He ought to give up that bathing in the Serpentine. At his age it's
monstrous. And surely any other girl will do just as well?"
"He seems to set store by reading to her specially."
Stephen shrugged his shoulders. It had happened to him on one
occasion to be present when Mr. Stone was declaiming some pages of his
manuscript. He had never forgotten the discomfort of the experience.
"That crazy stuff," as he had called it to Cecilia afterwards, had
remained on his mind, heavy and damp, like a cold linseed poultice. His
wife's father was a crank, and perhaps even a little more than a crank,
a wee bit "touched"--that she couldn't help, poor girl; but any allusion
to his cranky produce gave Stephen pain. Nor had he forgotten his
experience at dinner.
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