She's the best.They don't make them any better than that, and just think, if she's like that now, what will she be when she's grown up, when she's learned a few things? Now her sister.You can see just what her sister will be at thirty, and at fifty, and at eighty.She's thoroughbred and she's the most beautiful woman to look at I ever saw--but, my son--she is too careful.She hasn't any illusions, and no sense of humor.And a woman with no illusions and no sense of humor is going to be monotonous.You can't teach her anything.You can't imagine yourself telling her anything she doesn't know.The things we think important don't reach her at all.They're not in her line, and in everything else she knows more than we could ever guess at.But that Miss Hope! It's a privilege to show her about.She wants to see everything, and learn everything, and she goes poking her head into openings and down shafts like a little fox terrier.
And she'll sit still and listen with her eyes wide open and tears in them, too, and she doesn't know it--until you can't talk yourself for just looking at her.''
Clay rose and moved on to the house in silence.He was glad that MacWilliams had interrupted him when he did.He wondered whether he understood Alice Langham after all.He had seen many fine ladies before during his brief visits to London, and Berlin, and Vienna, and they had shown him favor.He had known other women not so fine.Spanish-American senoritas through Central and South America, the wives and daughters of English merchants exiled along the Pacific coast, whose fair skin and yellow hair whitened and bleached under the hot tropical suns.He had known many women, and he could have quoted``Trials and troubles amany, Have proved me;One or two women, God bless them!