Now Mapleson, never was a finer conductor of
opera--you didn't catch him in a pink tie in the evening. And some of
those others, who failed in a couple of weeks, I give you my word, dress
shirts with forgetmenots."
She regarded him with a frowning, half closed vision. "It sounds wrong,"
she commented. "It's been your life, of course." He grew resentful under
her scrutiny, the implied criticism. A sudden suspicion entered his
mind, connected with her expression last evening, the young man whose
name he had omitted to ask. His reluctance to question her returned. But
if Mariana had attached herself to some rowdy, by heaven, he would....
He fixed the glass in his eye, and, pretending to be occupied with a
periodical, studied her. He realized that he would, could, do nothing.
She was a woman of determination, and, her father dead, a very adequate
income of her own. His fondness for Mariana resided principally in a
wish to see her free from the multitudinous snares that he designated in
a group as common. He was fearful of her entanglement in the cheap
implications of the undistinguished democracy more prevalent every year.
All that was notable, charming, in her, he felt, would be obliterated by
trite connection; he had no more patience for the conventional
fulfilment of her life than he had for the thought of women voting.
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