Chapter 14 - Page 2

be sixteen.

Mrs. Heppel-Bevill had a girl of fifteen, who was a perfect
catastrophe. She read things and had begun to talk about her "right
to be a woman." Emily Heppel-Bevill was only thirty-seven--three
years from forty. Feather had reached the stage of softening in
her disdain of the women in their thirties. She had found herself
admitting that--in these days--there were women of forty who had
not wholly passed beyond the pale into that outer darkness where
there was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. But there
was no denying that this six year old baby, with the dancing step,
gave one--almost hysterically--"to think." Her imagination could
not--never had and never would she have allowed it to--grasp any
belief that she herself could change. A Feather, No! But a creature
of sixteen, eighteen--with eyes that shape--with lashes an inch
long--with yards of hair--standing by one's side in ten years! It
was ghastly!

Coombe, in his cold perfunctory way, climbing the crooked, narrow
stairs, dismissing Andrews--looking over the rooms--dismissing
them, so to speak, and then remaining after the rest had gone
to reveal to her a new abnormal mood--that, in itself alone, was
actually horrible. It was abnormal and yet he had always been more
or less like that in all things. Despite everything--everything--he
had never been in love with her at all. At first she had believed
he was--then she had tried to make him care for her. He had never
failed her, he had done everything in his grand seigneur fashion.
Nobody dare make gross comment upon her, but, while he saw her
loveliness as only such a man could--she had gradually realized
that she had never had even a chance with him. She could not
even think that if she had not been so silly and frightened that
awful day six years ago, and had not lost her head, he might have
admired her more and more and in the end asked her to marry him.
He had said there must be no mistakes, and she had not been allowed
to fall into making one. The fact that she had not, had, finally,
made her feel the power of a certain fascination in him. She thought
it was a result of his special type of looks, his breeding, the
wonderful clothes he wore--but it was, in truth, his varieties of
inaccessibility.

"A girl might like him," she had said to herself that night--she
sat up late after he left her. "A girl who--who had up-to-date sense
might. Modern people don't grow old as they used to. At fifty-five
he won't be fat, or bald and he won't have lost his teeth. People
have found out they needn't. He will be as thin and straight as
he is today--and nothing can alter his nose. He will be ten years
cleverer than he is now. Buying the