The Fighting Chance

Sylvia, sitting up very straight in her furs, said: "He found me anything but difficult--if that's what you mean."

"I don't. Please don't be vexed, dear. I plague everybody when I see an opening. There's really only one thing that worries me about it all."

"What is that?" asked Sylvia without interest.

"It's that you might be tempted to care a little for him, which, being useless, might be unwise."

"I am … tempted."

"Not seriously!"

"I don't know." She turned in a sudden nervous impatience foreign to her. "Howard Quarrier is too perfectly imperfect for me. I'm glad I've said it. The things he knows about and doesn't know have been a revelation in this last week with him. There is too much surface, too much exterior admirably fashioned. And inside is all clock-work. I've said it; I'm glad I have. He seemed different at Newport; he seemed nice at Lenox. The truth is, he's a horrid disappointment--and I'm bored to death at my brilliant prospects."

The low whizzing hum of the motor filled a silence that produced considerable effect upon Grace Ferrall. And, after mastering her wits, she said in a subdued voice: "Of course it's my meddling."

"Of course it isn't. I asked your opinion, but I knew what I was going to do. Only, I did think him personally possible--which made the expediency, the mercenary view of it easier to contemplate."

She was becoming as frankly brutal as she knew how to be, which made the revolt the more ominous.

"You don't think you could endure him for an hour or two a day, Sylvia?"

"It is not that," said the girl almost sullenly.

"But--"

"I'm afraid of myself--call it inherited mischief if you like! If I let a man do to me what Mr. Siward did when I was only engaged to Howard, what might I do--"

"You are not that sort!" said Mrs. Ferrall bluntly. "Don't be exotic, Sylvia."

"How do you know--if I don't know? Most girls are kissed; I--well I didn't expect to be. But I was! I tell you, Grace, I don't know what I am or shall be. I'm unsafe; I know that much."

"It's moral and honest to realize it," said Mrs. Ferrall suavely; "and in doing so you insure your own safety. Sylvia dear, I wish I hadn't meddled; I'm meddling some more I suppose when I say to you, don't give Howard his congé for the present. It is a horridly common thing to dwell upon, but Howard is too materially important to be cut adrift on the impulse of the moment."

"I know it."

"You are too clever not to. Consider the matter wisely, dispassionately, intelligently, dear; then if by April you simply can't stand it--talk the thing over with me again," she ended rather vaguely and wistfully; for it had been her heart's desire to wed Sylvia's beauty and Quarrier's fortune, and the suitability of the one for the other was apparent enough to make even sterner moralists wobbly in their creed. Quarrier, as a detail of modern human architecture, she supposed might fit in somewhere, and took that for granted in laying the corner stone for her fairy palace which Sylvia was to inhabit. And now!--oh, vexation!--the neglected but essentially constructive detail of human architecture had buckled, knocking the dream palace and its princess and its splendour about her ears.