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The footman's perfectly respectful tone implied a reflection on Waythorn's reasonableness. "Oh, very well," said the latter resignedly, and the footman proceeded to open the folding tea-table and set out its complicated appointments.
He and Varick had the same social habits, spoke the same language, understood the same allusions. But this other man...it was grotesquely uppermost in Waythorn's mind that Haskett had worn a made-up tie attached with an elastic. Why should that ridiculous detail symbolize the whole man?
She was very fond of Lily her affection for the child had perhaps been her decisive charm in Waythorn's eyes but she had the perfectly balanced nerves which her little girl had inherited, and no woman ever wasted less tissue in unproductive worry.
The negotiations were prolonged and complicated; they necessitated frequent conferences between the two men, and the interests of the firm forbade Waythorn's suggesting that his client should transfer his business to another office. Varick appeared well in the transaction.
In moments of relaxation his coarse streak appeared, and Waythorn dreaded his geniality; but in the office he was concise and clear-headed, with a flattering deference to Waythorn's judgment. Their business relations being so affably established, it would have been absurd for the two men to ignore each other in society.
Haskett's sincerity of purpose made him invulnerable, and his successor had to accept him as a lien on the property. Mr. Sellers was sent to Europe to recover from his gout, and Varick's affairs hung on Waythorn's hands.
In the rejoicing which ensued the thought of Haskett passed out of Waythorn's mind and one afternoon, letting himself into the house with a latchkey, he went straight to his library without noticing a shabby hat and umbrella in the hall. In the library he found a small effaced-looking man with a thinnish gray beard sitting on the edge of a chair.
Very awkward for me, as it happens, because he was just putting through a rather important thing for me." "Ah?" Waythorn wondered vaguely since when Varick had been dealing in "important things." Hitherto he had dabbled only in the shallow pools of speculation, with which Waythorn's office did not usually concern itself.
But Mrs. Waythorn's conduct remained irreproachable. She neither avoided Varick nor sought him out. Even Waythorn could not but admit that she had discovered the solution of the newest social problem. He had married her without giving much thought to that problem. He had fancied that a woman can shed her past like a man.
It was the first time that Varick had come to the house, and the surprise of seeing him, combined with the singular inopportuneness of his arrival, gave a new edge to Waythorn's blunted sensibilities. He stared at his visitor without speaking. Varick seemed too preoccupied to notice his host's embarrassment.
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