He stammered and was awkward and ungracious
with them, but Marcella, dimly realizing that it must be bad for him to
be drawn in so much upon their _egoisme a deux_, tried to make him more
sociable. When he forgot himself and was effortlessly hospitable, he was
charming. When he felt shy and frightened, and was fighting one of his
rhythmical fits of desire, he was difficult and rude.
Aunt Janet wrote every month: her letters varied little; they were
cynical though kindly; especially was she cynical about Louis, for,
though Marcella told her nothing about him, she guessed much from the
girl's description of their life. She was very cynical about Marcella's
breathless descriptions of her happiness: she was frankly despondent
about young Andrew, who, as yet, showed no signs of fulfilling her
gloomy predictions.
Dr. Angus wrote every mail. Though a world apart, he and Marcella seemed
to get closer together. He was growing younger with age, and she older.
He told her he had no friend but her letters, and wrote, sometimes
thirty pages of his small, neat handwriting to her--all about his
cases, his thoughts, his reading. And every book he bought he passed on
to her. Louis had had to put up three more shelves for them.
"I've been unduly extravagant, Mrs. Marcella," he wrote once, at the end
of the second year.
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