"She will fret you to death in a week, a faded flirt with the air of sixteen, who sets up for a genius. Get her married if you can. It is fortunate that there is some dispensation of fate to take people out of your way."
"I never had a sister," Violet says, half regretfully.
"Well, you will have enough of us," is the rejoinder. "Though I shall try to make no trouble. A book and a sofa satisfy me."
"Were you always ill? And you must have been pretty! You would be pretty now if you had some color and clearness, such as exercise would give you."
Gertrude is comforted by the naive compliment. No one ever praises her now.
"I was pretty to some one a long while ago," she says, pathetically.
It suggests a lover. "Oh, do tell me!" cries Violet, kneeling by the sofa. Marriage is marriage, of course, and Denise has instructed her in its duties, but is not love something accidental, not always happening in the regular sequence?
"It is not much," confesses Gertrude, "but it once was a great deal to me. I was engaged, and we loved each other dearly. I was soon to be married, the very first of them all, but he went wrong and had to go away in disgrace. It broke my heart!"
"Oh!" and Violet kisses her, with tears on her cheek. No wonder she is so sad and spiritless.
"I don't mind now. Perhaps it would have been no end of a bother, and I'm not fond of children. Cecil is the least troublesome of any I ever saw, but I couldn't have her about all the time, as you do. Yes, it seemed at first as if I must die," she says, in a curious past-despairing tone.