It is such men as this who love what
they call a serious talk, summoning the subject thereof with exaggerated
gravity to a study, making a point of the _mise en scene_, and finally
saying nothing that could not have been spoken in course of ordinary
conversation.
Dora detected the odour of a serious talk in the atmosphere, and she
found that something had taken away the awe which such conversations had
hitherto inspired. It may have been the season in town, but it was more
probably that confidence which comes from the knowledge of the world.
There were things in life of which she consciously knew more than her
father, and one of these was sorrow. There is nothing that gives so much
confidence as the knowledge that the worst possible has happened. It
raises one above the petty worries of daily existence.
Dora knew that her acquaintance with sorrow was more intimate, more
thorough, than that of her father, who sat looking as if the hangman were
at the door. She awaited the serious talk with some apprehension, but
none of that almost paralysing awe which she had known in childhood.
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