'
The other frowned slightly; finding this persistence perhaps a trifle
crude, he remarked good-humouredly enough:
'Will you be good enough to explain your opposition? Do you object to the
girl? You have been back a week now, during which you have seen almost as
much of her as I.'
'She is a child, to begin with; there is five-and-twenty years' disparity
between you. But it's the relation I object to, not the girl. Do you intend
to live in Ploumariel?'
Sebastian smiled, with a suggestion of irony.
'Not precisely; I think it would interfere a little with my career; why do
you ask?'
'I imagined not; you will go back to London with your little Breton wife,
who is as charming here as the apple-blossom in her own garden. You will
introduce her to your circle, who will receive her with open arms; all the
clever bores, who write, and talk, and paint, and are talked about between
Bloomsbury and Kensington. Everybody who is emancipated will know her, and
everybody who has a "fad"; and they will come in a body and emancipate her,
and teach her their "fads."'
'That is a caricature of my circle, as you call it, Tregellan! though I may
remind you it is also yours. I think she is being starved in this corner,
spiritually.
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