It is true that the girl had written
since, only Mrs. Fyne had been remarkably vague as to the contents. They
were unsatisfactory. They did not positively announce imminent nuptials
as far as I could make it out from her rather mysterious hints. But then
her inexperience might have led her astray. There was no fathoming the
innocence of a woman like Mrs. Fyne who, venturing as far as possible in
theory, would know nothing of the real aspect of things. It would have
been comic if she were making all this fuss for nothing. But I rejected
this suspicion for the honour of human nature.
I imagined to myself Captain Anthony as simple and romantic. It was much
more pleasant. Genius is not hereditary but temperament may be. And he
was the son of a poet with an admirable gift of individualising, of
etherealizing the common-place; of making touching, delicate, fascinating
the most hopeless conventions of the, so-called, refined existence.
What I could not understand was Mrs. Fyne's dog-in-the-manger attitude.
Sentimentally she needed that brother of hers so little! What could it
matter to her one way or another--setting aside common humanity which
would suggest at least a neutral attitude.
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