It was a distasteful question, and he did not
find it much more agreeable when it subdivided itself into the question
of necessity on her part, and of a not very clearly realized situation on
Mrs. Westangle's. The girl had a right to sell her ideas, and perhaps
the woman thought they were her own when she had paid for them. There
could be that view of it all. The furtive nature of Miss Shirley's
presence in the house might very well be a condition of that grand event
she was preparing. It was all very mysterious.
XVII.
It rained throughout the evening, with a wailing of the wind in the
gables, and a weeping and a sobbing of the water from the eaves that Mrs.
Westangle's guests, securely housed from the storm, made the most of for
weirdness. There had been a little dancing, which gave way to so much
sitting-out that the volunteer music abruptly ceased as if in dudgeon,
and there was nothing left but weirdness to bring young hearts together.
Weirdness can do a good deal with girls lounging in low chairs, and young
men on rugs round a glowing hearth at their feet; and every one told some
strange thing that had happened at first hand, or second or third hand,
either to himself or herself, or to their fathers or brothers or
grandmothers or old servants.
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