Would have married her, I suppose, but for the
extraordinarily decent way the young woman behaved about it."
"Luckily Reggie is away," Ada comforted herself. "He'll have been in love
a dozen times over before he comes back again."
"But what are you going to do with the girl? Won't it bore you to have her
always about? You have never wanted a companion before."
"How do you know I have not?" his sister asked him laughing. "I didn't
know it myself, but I expect I've wanted one all the time. At last I'm
going to have one."
There was in Ada Forcus that ineradicable love of gaiety which some women
carry to the grave. Since, at the death of his wife, she had gone to keep
house for her brother small indulgence had been shown to this passion. In
the grave of his wife, not only all Sir Francis's heart had been buried,
but apparently the love of all that made for the brightness of life. By
the time the poignancy of his sorrow had worn off, to be solemn and sad of
demeanour, to shun the disturbing effects of social distraction, had
become second nature to him. By no wish of his own, but naturally and
irresistibly, that habit of melancholy which had fallen on its master
seemed to enshroud his home.
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