He's your friend, I know, Miss Buchanan, as well as your relative, but you know what I feel for Althea, and you'll forgive my saying that if I'm not big enough for her he isn't big enough either; no, upon my soul, he isn't.' Helen's eyes dwelt on him.

She knew that, with all the forces of concealment at her command, she wanted to keep from Mr.Kane the blighting irony of her own inner comments; above everything, now, she dreaded lest her irony should touch one of Mr.Kane's ideals.

It was so beautiful of him to think himself not big enough for Althea, that she was well content that he should see Gerald in the same category of unfitness.

Perhaps Gerald was not big enough for Althea; Gerald's bigness didn't interest Helen; the great point for her was that Mr.Kane should not guess that she considered Althea not big enough for him.

'If Gerald is the lucky man,' she said, after the pause in which she gazed at him; 'if she cares enough for Gerald to marry him, then I think he will make her happy; and that's the chief thing, isn't it ?' Mr.Kane could not deny that it was, and yet, evidently, he was not satisfied.