"In the car, rather," responded Ralph, "The lady is fabulously wealthy, I believe. Former husband, a steel magnate or something of the sort."
"Well, that will help Maryon in his profession," said Nan, "with a quiet composure that was rather astonishing. But, as usual, in a social crisis of this nature, she seemed able to control her voice, though her restless fingers betrayed her.
"Yes, presumably that's why he's marrying her," replied Ralph. "It can't be a case of love at first sight"--grimly.
"Isn't she pretty, then?" asked Penelope.
"Plain as a pikestaff"--with emphasis. "I've met her once or twice--Lady Beverley."
It appeared from the chorus which followed that everyone present knew her more or less.
"I should think she is plain!" exclaimed Kitty heartily.
"Yes, she'd need to be very well gilded," commented her husband.
"You're all rather severe, aren't you?" suggested Lord St. John. "After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
"Not with an artist," asserted Nan promptly. "He can't see beauty where there isn't any."
To the depths of her soul she felt that this was true, and inwardly she recoiled violently from the idea of Maryon's marriage. She had been bitterly hurt by his treatment of her, but to a certain extent she had been able to envisage the whole affair from his point of view and to understand it.
A rising young artist, if he wishes to succeed, cannot afford to hamper himself with a wife and contend with the endless sordid details of housekeeping conducted on a necessarily economical scale. It slowly but surely deadens the artist in him--the delicate creative inspiration that is so easily smothered by material cares and worries. Nan refused to blame Maryon simply because he had not married her then and there. But she could not forgive him for deliberately seeking her out and laying on her that strange fascination of his when, in his own heart, he must have known that he would always ultimately place his art before love.
And that he should marry Lady Beverley, a thoroughly commonplace woman hung round with the money her late husband had bequeathed her, Maryon's very antithesis in all that pertained to the beautiful--this sickened her. It seemed to her as though he were yielding his birthright in exchange for a mess of pottage.