Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/459

Rh to entertain—and you know poor Bessy always hated this furniture.”

Mrs. Amherst smiled slightly. “Perhaps if he marries again—” she said, seizing at random on a pretext for changing the subject.

Mrs. Dressel dropped the hands with which she was absent-mindedly assuring herself of the continuance of unbroken relations between her hat and her hair.

“Marries again? Why—you don’t mean—? He doesn’t think of it?”

“Not in the least—I spoke ﬁguratively,” her hostess rejoined with a laugh.

“Oh, of course—I see. He really couldn’t marry, could he? I mean, it would be so wrong to Cicely—under the circumstances.”

Mrs. Amherst’s black eye-brows gathered in a slight frown. She had already noticed, on the part of the Hanaford clan, a disposition to regard Amherst as imprisoned in the conditions of his trust, and committed to the obligation of handing on unimpaired to Cicely the fortune his wife’s caprice had bestowed on him; and this open expression of the family view was singularly displeasing to her.

“I had not thought of it in that light—but it’s really of no consequence how one looks at a thing that is not going to happen,” she said carelessly.

“No—naturally; I see you were only joking. He’s [ 443 ]