Arthur
had laughed when the proposed arrangement was submitted to him.
"Does your care for your pastor's spiritual welfare go so far," he
asked jocosely, "that you don't dare trust him with a young woman?
Really, it looks as if you were jealous of the red-haired angel."
"Mr. Candish is not a young woman's man," had been Edith's answer;
whereat her husband laughed again.
The talk at dinner was less animated than was usual at Fenton's table.
The host was preoccupied, despite his efforts not to appear so, and the
company was somehow not fully in touch. No conversation could be wholly
dull, however, which Arthur led; and while the "lady's finger" in his
cheek told his wife and Helen that he was laboring under some intense
excitement, he held himself pluckily in hand.
The conversation at first was between neighbors, but soon the host,
according to his fashion, began to answer any remark that his quick
ears caught, no matter from whose lips.
"You talk about marriage like a Pagan," he heard Helen say to Rangely.
"Oh, no," Fenton broke in, "he doesn't go half far enough for a Pagan.
The Pagan position is that matrimony is a matter of temperament and
convenience; it is essentially Philistine to consider that a marriage
ceremony imposes eternal obligations."
"There, Mr. Fenton," Mrs. Hubbard rejoined, "I haven't heard you say
anything so heathenish for half a dozen years.
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