Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/89

Rh I care about that. You talk as a man who has nothing to consider. I have everything to consider—and I am glad I have. My pleasure in marrying her will be double if my father and my sisters accept her, and I shall greatly enjoy working out the business of bringing them round."

There were moments when Charles Waterlow resented the very terminology of his friend: he hated to hear a man talk about the woman he loved being "accepted." If one accepted her one's self or, rather, were accepted by her, that ended the matter, and the effort to bring round those who gave her the cold shoulder was scarcely consistent with self-respect. Probert explained that of course he knew his relatives would only have to know Francina to like her, to delight in her; but that to know her they would first have to make her acquaintance. This was the delicate point, for social commerce with such people as Mr. Dosson and Delia was not in the least in their usual line and it was impossible to disconnect the poor girl from her appendages. Therefore the whole question must be approached by an oblique movement; it would never do to march straight up to it, The wedge should have a narrow end and Gaston was ready to declare that he had found it. His sister Susan was another name for it; he would break her in first and she would help him to break in the others. She was his favourite relation, his intimate friend—the most modern, the most