Carstyle's
choice. When I married Mr. Carstyle it was with the expectation of living
in New York and of keeping my carriage; and there is no reason for our not
doing so--there is no reason, Mr. Vibart, why my daughter Ireen should
have been denied the intellectual advantages of foreign travel. I wish
that to be understood. It is owing to her father's deliberate choice that
Ireen and I have been imprisoned in the narrow limits of Millbrook
society. For myself I do not complain. If Mr. Carstyle chooses to place
others before his wife it is not for his wife to repine. His course may be
noble--Quixotic; I do not allow myself to pronounce judgment on it, though
others have thought that in sacrificing his own family to strangers he was
violating the most sacred obligations of domestic life. This is the
opinion of my pastor and of other valued friends; but, as I have always
told them, for myself I make no claims. Where my daughter Ireen is
concerned it is different--"
It was a relief to Vibart when, at this point, Mrs. Carstyle's discharge
of her duty was cut short by her daughter's reappearance. Irene had been
unable to find a cigarette for Mr. Vibart, and her mother, with beaming
irrelevance, suggested that in that case she had better show him the
garden.
The Carstyle house stood but a few yards back from the brick-paved
Millbrook street, and the garden was a very small place, unless measured,
as Mrs. Carstyle probably intended that it should be, by the extent of her
daughter's charms.
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