CHAPTER LX.
If there was one feeling which swayed Mrs. Rolfe quite as strongly as her religious fanaticism (to use the word of the lukewarm), it was her absorbing love and admiration of her daughter. Not a specially intellectual woman herself, Mary’s gifts and wide culture were a source of continual exultation to her. “She gets her literary turn from her father,” she used to say, truly enough; for he was a cultivated man (there were no “cultured” men in existence then, thank God), who would have made his mark in letters had he lived in a more stimulating atmosphere. In fact (though Mrs. R. always denied it with a blush), he had carried the day over more than one suitor for her hand, and won her young heart by means of his endowments in this very direction; for while they had been confined, by the limitations of their several geniuses, to sighing like furnaces, he had made a woful ballad to his mistress’s eyebrow; bringing victory; and the defeated went their way, full of strange oaths.
So that a sort of sentimental interest in literature heightened Mrs. Rolfe’s admiration for her daughter’s accomplishments.
She was her only child, too; and no one can blame her for looking upon it as axiomatic that few men were good enough for her Mary.
Judge of her dismay, then, when she learned so suddenly that her daughter was profoundly interested in a man whom it was quite natural for her to look upon as a suspicious character. No wonder, then, that she surprised her neighbors by the rapid pace at which she had crossed the street. She walked briskly, too, when she returned from her long talk with Alice, but her face wore a different expression.
For she was rehearsing a pleasant little drama as she hurried back across the street.
Her daughter’s sad face had deeply pained her. It was plain to see that if she loved not wisely, she loved, at least, too well; and she pitied her from the bottom of her heart. Perhaps some anger had been mingled with the softer feeling at first; but Alice had put a new face upon the matter; and she was hurrying home to say to her daughter that she for one (and her father for another) looked upon the alleged scepticism of young men as the most harmless of eccentricities; and her face wore a determined smile. She did not intend to commit herself. It would be time enough to express her views (that is to say, Mr. Rolfe’s) when this Enigma had given an account of himself. But if that was all that could be said against him, etc., etc., etc., etc.
And, would you believe it? the very incognito of our hero had begun to make the imagination of this staid matron cut fantastic capers. Who could tell? Strange things had happened before. Why not?
“Sceptic or something!” She almost laughed as she turned the knob of the door. “The poor child should laugh, too!”
The poor child did not laugh!