“A proud, saucy, beautiful Canadian, educated in a tip-top New York boarding school, in all the pronounced fads of the day. Now, I have seen New York girls of this progressive kind, and the polish being natural to them, they were not only dashing and impertinent, they were fascinating in all their dictatory moods. But this kind of polish is intolerable when laid over a hard, calculating, really puritanical Scotch nature. Such a girl has to kill some of her very best qualities, in order to take it on at all.”
“She would be gey hard to live wi’. I wouldn’t stay wi’ her—not a day.”
“Yet, I can tell you, both English and Scotch men are enslaved easily by this new kind of girl. She is only the girl of the period and the place, but they imagine her to be the very latest improvement in womanly styles. Now, I will astonish you. Reginald married the sister of Angus Ballister’s wife. She is equally beautiful, equally impertinent and selfish, and she holds Reginald in a leash. She makes fun of my dowdy dress and ways, and of my antiquated moralities, even to my brother, in my very presence, and Reggie looks at me critically, and then at Sabrina—that is the creature’s name—and says—‘Roberta, you ought to get Brina to show you how to dress, and how to behave. You should just see Brina tread our old fogyish social laws under her feet. She makes a sensation in every room she enters.’ And I answer pointedly—‘I have no doubt 347 of it.’ She understands my laugh, though Reggie is far from it. Of course she hates me, and she has quite changed Reggie. I have no longer any brother. I want to go and see if my husband cares for me.”
“Of course he cares for you, more than for any ither thing. Go to him. Mak’ a man every way of him. Teach him to trust you, and you may trust him. Now go and sleep until the Domine comes, and he will tak’ care of your further movements.”
When the Domine came, he treated Roberta very like a daughter, but he would not hear her tale of woe over again. He said, “There are faults on both sides. You cannot strike fire, without both flint and steel.”
“I have been so lonely and miserable, Doctor, since I saw you last. Reggie has quite deserted me for her.”
“Well, then, Roberta, walk your lonely room with God, and humbly dare to tell Him all your heart.”
“I never had any suspicion of Neil, until——”
“Roberta, women trust on all points, or are on all points suspicious.”