would ask more, but less. It's too pretty, too easy, too _a propos_; so
much so that it frightens me a little. Valerie has, you see, made a mess of
it. She has, you see, spoiled her life, in that aspect of it. To mend it
now, so completely, to start fresh at--how old is she?--at forty-six, it's
just a little glib. Somehow one doesn't get off so easily as that. One
can't start so happily at forty-six. Perhaps one is wiser not to try."

"Oh, nonsense, my dear! It's very American, that, you know, that picking of
holes in excellent material, furbishing up your consciences, running after
your motives as if you were ferrets in a rat-hole. If all you have to say
against it is that it's too perfect, too happy,--why, then I keep to my own
conviction. She'll be peacefully married and back among us in a year."

Mrs. Wake seemed to acquiesce, yet still to have her reserves. "There's
Imogen, you know. Imogen has to be counted with."

"Counted with! Valerie, I hope, is clever enough to manage that young
person. It would be a little too much if the daughter spoiled the end of
her life as the husband spoiled the beginning."

"You are a bit hard on Everard, you know, from mere partizanship. Valerie
was by no means a misused wife and his friends may well have thought him a
misused husband; Imogen does, I'm sure. She has, perhaps, a right to feel
that, as her father's representative, her mother owes her something in the
way of atonement."

"It does vex me, my dear, to have you argue like that against your own
convictions. It was all his fault,--one only has to know her to be sure of
it. He made things unbearable for her."