That you should
get involved in roadside brawls with competitors for the possession of the
minx is worse yet. Worst of all that you should advertise by all these
doings, to all our world, your infatuation for such a creature and your
greater interest in her than in me. I am indignant that I have considered
marrying a suitor capable of such vileness, of such fatuity, of such
folly."
I was like a sailboat taken all aback by a sudden change of wind. I could
not believe my ears.
"I never took the slightest interest in Marcia," I protested, "except to
keep my uncle from marrying her, after he set her free. She made eyes at
me also, of course, for she made eyes at every marriageable man within
reach. But I never had anything to do with her, never called on her by
myself, never so much as talked to her alone. I went to her dinners, of
course. All widowers and bachelors of our district went to her dinners.
But her dinners were the pattern of propriety in every way. Your own
grandmother's famous dinners were not more decorous. Except for being a
guest, with others, at her dinners, I never was at her villa. I lent my
carriage not to her but to her bridegroom, Marcus Martius, a prosperous
gentleman of my neighborhood, of whom you have often heard me speak, a
friend of my uncle's and a friend of mine since boyhood.
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