Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/45

Rh went on. "If there were nothing else there would be a reason in her being so interested in politics, in everything that he is."

"Ah, what he is—that's what I sometimes wonder!"

Grace Dormer looked at her mother a moment. "Why, mother, isn't he going to be like papa?" She waited for an answer that didn't come; after which she pursued: "I thought you thought him so like him already."

"Well, I don't," said Lady Agnes, quietly.

"Who is, then? Certainly Percy isn't."

Lady Agnes was silent a moment. "There is no one like your father."

"Dear papa!" Grace exclaimed. Then, with a rapid transition: "It would be so jolly for all of us; she would be so nice to us."

"She is that already, in her way," said Lady Agnes, conscientiously, having followed the return, quick as it was. "Much good does it do her!" And she reproduced the note of her ejaculation of a moment before.

"It does her some, if one looks out for her. I do, and I think she knows it," Grace declared. "One can, at any rate, keep other women off."

"Don't meddle! you're very clumsy," was her mother's not particularly sympathetic rejoinder. "There are other women who are beautiful, and there are others who are clever and rich."

"Yes, but not all in one; that's what's so nice in Julia. Her fortune would be thrown in; he wouldn't appear to have married her for it."