He did this out of a sort of unreasoned allegiance to Margaret,
whom he was in the mood of wishing to please by being very kind and good,
as she always was. He had the sense also of atoning by this behavior for
some reckless things he had said before that to Christine; he put on a
sad, reproving air with her, and gave her the feeling of being held in
check.
She chafed at it, and said, glancing at Margaret in talk with her
brother, "I don't think Miss Vance is so very pretty, do you?"
"I never think whether she's pretty or not," said Becton, with dreamy,
affectation. "She is merely perfect. Does she know your brother?"
"So she says. I didn't suppose Conrad ever went anywhere, except to
tenement-houses."
"It might have been there," Becton suggested. "She goes among friendless
people everywhere."
"Maybe that's the reason she came to see us!" said Christine.
Becton looked at her with his smouldering eyes, and felt the wish to say,
"Yes, it was exactly that," but he only allowed himself to deny the
possibility of any such motive in that case. He added: "I am so glad you
know her, Miss Dryfoos. I never met Miss Vance without feeling myself
better and truer, somehow; or the wish to be so.
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