This wasn't his fault, he repeated; positively, judged by
her manner, he might be doing something wrong. Fanny even managed to
convey a doubt of Mrs. Grove, Mrs. William Loyd Grove. But she couldn't
see how ridiculous that was.
William Grove Lee liked negatively; there was, patently, nothing in him
to create an active response. His short heavy body was faultlessly
clothed; his heavy face, with its moustache twisted into points, the
clouded purple of his cheeks contradicted by the penetration of a
steadily focussed gaze, expressed nothing more than a niceness of
balance between self-indulgence, tempered by exercise, games in open
air, and a far from negligible administration of the resources he had
inherited.
"You are a relative of the Morrises?" he asked Lee, turning from the
menu set before him in a miniature silver frame. This Lee Randon
admitted, and Grove's eyebrows mounted. "Can't anything be done with
the young man?"
"How are you succeeding with the young woman?" Lee returned.
"Oh, women--" William Grove waved his hand; "you can't argue with
women. Mina wants her Peyton--if that's his name; God knows I've heard
it enough--and there's no more to that."
"It begins to look as though she'd get him," Lee observed; "I must say
we haven't got far with Morris."
"Extraordinary."
It was Mrs. Grove who spoke. She was dressed in grey, a gown cut away
from sheer points on her shoulders, with a girdle of small gilt roses,
her hair in a binding of grey brocade and amber ornaments; and above
her elbows were bands of dull intricately pierced gold.
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