“You’ve seen a lot more of her than I have. What do you?” “Brain above the average, but nothing wonderful. Will very strong—she’s as tenacious as a limpet.” “I should think so. But she’s got her feelings too, hasn’t she?” “That’s the point on which I have some doubt. Well, study her for yourself. I think she’s worth it.” He was frowning a little as he spoke, as though his doubt troubled him, although he could give no very good reason for it. “However, she has lots of good qualities—lots,” he ended. He gave the impression of a man trying to reconcile himself to something, and finding his task difficult. He praised the Frost family in handsomely general terms, with hardly a reservation; yet with just the hint of one. It was as though Nina—and her cousin too, for that matter—just failed to give him complete satisfaction, just lacked something that his nature or his taste needed. I did not think that it was anything very serious—not anything that could be called moral, a matter of lack of virtue or presence of vice. It was rather a dourness, too much solidity, too little gayety, humor, responsiveness. The Frosts were perhaps not “out of working harness” enough. Did his mind insist on drawing a contrast? He had loved the girl of whom we did not speak. Aunt Bertha’s attitude was different, as her letters had suggested. Her acute and eminently practical mind wasted no time in pining for ideals, or in indulging delicate dissatisfactions. It preferred to concentrate on the pleasant aspects of the attainable. One can’t expect everything in this world! And it may even be doubted whether the softer charms, the insidious fascinations, are desirable attributes in women (men, of course, never possess them, so that the question doesn’t arise there); don’t they bring more trouble than good to their possessors, or anyhow to other people? (To her dear Waldo?) Perhaps they do. At any rate, it was by hints of this order that Aunt Bertha, having seen reason herself, sought to overcome the lingering sentimentalities, and perhaps memories, of Sir Paget. “The kindness of the girl!” said Aunt Bertha. “All through her own trouble—and you know how she loved her father!—she never forgot us and our anxiety. She used to manage to see me almost every day; came with grapes—you know the Briarmount grapes?—or something, for Waldo, and cheered me up with a little talk. She may not gush, she may not splash about, but Nina has a heart of gold, Julius.” “Then she’s gold all through, inside and out,” I said, rather flippantly. “Men are often fools,” Aunt Bertha remarked—and I hope that the observation may be considered irrelevant. “They undervalue the real things that matter in a woman.” “What’s the application of that? I’m sure that Waldo likes Lady Dundrannan very much.”