TWO ON A TOUR
unshed tears! “Of course he has five or six superiors in office but I suppose really that Duke’s extraordinary talent keeps that whole shipping board going! You mark my words, Charlotte, when Duke gives up his position and goes to Plattsburg there’ll be an absolute slump in that office! But just hear what follows; it is so discouraging!”)
But when, glowing with the delight that always comes to me when I have any little tribute to lay with my love at your charming number-three feet, when I returned to my table your mother had gone to her room and the Philadelphia aunt remained to explain that she had been taken suddenly ill.
“It will all come right, Mr.—my dear boy!” she said. “My sister has one weakness, an abnormal sensitiveness to public opinion. She thinks constantly what people will say of this, that, or the other trifling thing, and in that way perpetually loses sight of the realities of life. There is a great deal of good in her that you have never seen because for the moment she is absolutely obsessed by her objection to your name and her conviction that Dorothea might and should marry a
219
