Professor Kennedy crossed one long, elegantly slim leg over the other, "I've been dining with the Kennedy family," he said, with a neat and significant conciseness.
"Anything specially the matter with the predatory rich?" queried Marshall, reaching for his viola-case.
Professor Kennedy shook his head. "Alas! there's never anything the matter with them. _Comme le diable, ils se portent toujours bien_."
At the purity of accent with which this embittered remark was made, Mrs. Marshall-Smith opened her eyes, and paid more attention as the old professor went on.
"The last of my unmarried nieces has shown herself a true Kennedy by providing herself with a dolichocephalic blond of a husband, like all the others. The dinner was given in honor of the engagement."
Sylvia was accustomed to finding Professor Kennedy's remarks quite unintelligible, and this one seemed no odder to her than the rest, so that she was astonished that Aunt Victoria was not ashamed to confess as blank an ignorance as the little girl's. The beautiful woman leaned toward the morose old man with the suave self-confidence of one who has never failed to charm, and drew his attention to her by a laugh of amused perplexity. "May I ask," she inquired, "_what_ kind of a husband is that? It is a new variety to me."
Professor Kennedy looked at her appraisingly. "It's the kind most women aspire to," he answered enigmatically. He imparted to this obscure remark the air of passing a sentence of condemnation.
Sylvia's mother stirred uneasily in her chair and looked at her husband. He had begun to take his viola from the case, but now returned it and stood looking quizzically from his sister to his guest. "Professor Kennedy talks a special language, Vic," he said lightly. "Some day he'll make a book of it and be famous. He divides us all into two kinds: the ones that get what they want by taking it away from other people--those are the dolichocephalic blonds--though I believe it doesn't refer to the color of their hair. The other kind are the white folks, the unpredatory ones who have scruples, and get pushed to the wall for their pains."
Mrs. Marshall-Smith turned to the young man beside her. "It makes one wonder, doesn't it," she conjectured pleasantly, "to which type one belongs oneself?"