Miss Carstyle, the young man decided, was the kind of
girl whose surroundings rub off on her; or was it rather that Mrs.
Carstyle's idiosyncrasies were of a nature to color every one within
reach? Vibart, looking across the table as this consolatory alternative
occurred to him, was sure that they had not colored Mr. Carstyle; but
that, perhaps, was only because they had bleached him instead. Mr.
Carstyle was quite colorless; it would have been impossible to guess his
native tint. His wife's qualities, if they had affected him at all, had
acted negatively. He did not apologize for the mutton, and he wandered off
after luncheon without pretending to wait for the diurnal coffee and
liqueurs; while the few remarks that he had contributed to the
conversation during the meal had not been in the direction of abstract
conceptions of life. As he strayed away, with his vague oblique step, and
the stoop that suggested the habit of dodging missiles, Vibart, who was
still in the age of formulas, found himself wondering what life could be
worth to a man who had evidently resigned himself to travelling with his
back to the wind; so that Mrs. Carstyle's allusion to her daughter's lack
of advantages (imparted while Irene searched the house for an
undiscoverable cigarette) had an appositeness unintended by the speaker.
"If Mr. Carstyle had chosen," that lady repeated, "we might have had our
city home" (she never used so small a word as town) "and Ireen could have
mixed in the society to which I myself was accustomed at her age.
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