A Coward - Page 2

which I myself was accustomed at her age." Her
sigh pointed unmistakably to a past when young men had come to luncheon to
see _her_.

The sigh led Vibart to look at her, and the look led him to the unwelcome
conclusion that Irene "took after" her mother. It was certainly not from
the sapless paternal stock that the girl had drawn her warm bloom: Mrs.
Carstyle had contributed the high lights to the picture.

Mrs. Carstyle caught his look and appropriated it with the complacency of
a vicarious beauty. She was quite aware of the value of her appearance as
guaranteeing Irene's development into a fine woman.

"But perhaps," she continued, taking up the thread of her explanation,
"you have heard of Mr. Carstyle's extraordinary hallucination. Mr.
Carstyle knows that I call it so--as I tell him, it is the most charitable
view to take."

She looked coldly at the threadbare sofa and indulgently at the young man
who filled a corner of it.

"You may think it odd, Mr. Vibart, that I should take you into my
confidence in this way after so short an acquaintance, but somehow I can't
help regarding you as a friend already. I believe in those intuitive
sympathies, don't you? They have never misled me--" her lids drooped
retrospectively--"and besides, I always tell Mr. Carstyle that on this
point I will have no false pretences. Where truth is concerned I am
inexorable, and I consider it my duty to let our friends know that our
restricted way of living is due entirely to choice--to Mr. Carstyle's
choice. When I married Mr. Carstyle it was with the expectation of living
in New York and of keeping my carriage; and there is no reason for our not
doing so--there is no reason, Mr. Vibart, why my daughter Ireen should
have been denied the intellectual advantages of foreign travel. I wish
that to be understood. It is owing to her father's deliberate choice that
Ireen and I have been imprisoned in the narrow limits of Millbrook
society. For myself I do not complain. If Mr. Carstyle chooses to place
others before his wife it is not for his wife to repine. His course may be
noble--Quixotic; I do not allow myself to pronounce judgment on it, though
others have thought that in sacrificing his own family to strangers he was
violating the most sacred obligations of domestic life. This is the
opinion of my pastor and of other valued friends; but, as I have always
told them, for myself I make no claims. Where my daughter Ireen is
concerned it is different--"

It was a relief to Vibart when, at this point, Mrs. Carstyle's discharge
of her duty was cut short by her daughter's reappearance. Irene had been
unable to find a cigarette for Mr. Vibart, and her mother, with