Now he turned
his gray eyes upon Alice Mellen, partly from real interest in her
personality; partly to counterbalance the rapt attention which Ethel
was bestowing upon the Captain. She had been the selfsame Ethel, a
bundle of contradictions that attracted him at one moment and
antagonized him at the next. He liked her absolutely; his very
liking for her increased the sense of antagonism when, for the
instant, she departed from his ideals of what she ought to be. And
yet, Weldon was candid enough to admit to himself that she departed
from them, rather than fell below them. Often as she had antagonized
him, she had never really disappointed him.
As for Alice Mellen, he confessed himself surprised. Gathering
together all that Ethel had ever told him of her cousin, of her
living her entire life out there in the southern end of South
Africa, of her desire to be a nurse, he had pieced together an
effigy of the combined traits of a Hottentot and a vivandiere. This
girl answered to neither description. Her clothes and her manners
and her accent all had come, albeit with slow indirectness, from
London. Not only would she and her gowns pass muster in a crowd; but
furthermore she would end by being the focal point of a good share
of that crowd.
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