Of course women would believe anything . . .
Nevertheless . . .
He scarcely listened to their chatter. He was forcing himself not to
look at his sister, and yet Thurston's news seemed so extraordinary
to him that his eye kept stealing round to her to see whether she
were still the same. Could she have accepted him, that bounder and
cad and charlatan? He felt a sudden cold chill of isolation as
though in this world none of the ordinary laws were followed. "By
God, I am a stranger here," he thought. It was not until after
dinner that night that he was alone with his father. He had resolved
on many fine things in the interval. He was going to "have it out
with him," "to put his foot down," "to tell him that such a thing as
Thurston's marriage to his sister was perfectly impossible." And
then, for the thousandth time since his return to England he felt
strangely weak and irresolute. He did wish to be "firm" with his
father, but it would have been so much easier to be firm had he not
been so fond of him. "Soft, sentimental weakness," he called it to
himself, but he knew that it was something deeper than that,
something that he would never be able to deny.
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