Page:Early Autumn (1926).pdf/46

 they stood unprotected by all that money laid away in solid trust funds, they would have no existence whatever. They would suddenly be what they really were.

She saw sharply, clearly, for the first time, and she said quietly, "I think you dislike Thérèse for reasons that are not fair to the girl. You distrust her because she is different from all the others . . . from the sort of girls that you were trained to believe perfect. Heaven knows there are enough of them about here . . . girls as like as peas in a pod."

"And what about this boy who is coming to stay with Sabine and her daughter . . . this American boy with a French name who has never seen his own country until now? I suppose he'll be as queer as all the others. Who knows anything about him?"

"Sabine," began Olivia.

"Sabine!" he interrupted. "Sabine! What does she care who he is or where he comes from? She's given up decent people long ago, when she went away from here and married that Levantine blackguard of a husband. Sabine! . . . Sabine would only like to bring trouble to us . . . the people to whom she belongs. She hates us. . . . She can barely speak to me in a civil fashion."

Olivia smiled quietly and tossed her cigarette into the ashes beneath the cold steel engraving of the Signing. "You are beginning to talk nonsense, Anson. Let's stick to facts, for once. I've met the boy in Paris. . . . Sybil knew him there. He is intelligent and handsome and treats women as if they were something more than stable-boys. There are still a few of us left who like to be treated thus . . . as women . . . a few of us even here in Durham. No, I don't imagine you'll care for him. He won't belong to your club or to your college, and he'll see life in a different way. He won't have had his opinions all ready made, waiting for him."