“Are you going to send for me to the ball?”
“I cannot promise that, Dora. Good-by.”
Dora did not answer. She buried her face in the soft pillow, and Ethel closed the door to the sound of her sobs. But they did not cause her to return or to make any foolish promises. She divined their insincerity and their motive, and had no mind to take any part in forwarding the latter.
And Ruth assured her she had acted wisely. “If trouble should ever come of this friendship,” she said, “Dora would very likely complain that you had always thrown Mostyn in her way, brought him to her house in New York, and brought her to him at Rawdon, in England. Marriage is such a risk, Ethel, but to marry without the courage to adapt oneself. AH!”
“You think that condition unspeakably hard?”
“There are no words for it.”
“Dora was not reticent, I assure you.”
“I am sorry. A wife’s complaints are self-inflicted wounds; scattered seeds, from which only misery can spring. I hope you will not see her again at this time.”
“I made no promise to do so.”
“And where all is so uncertain, we had better suppose all is right than that all is wrong. Even if there was the beginning of wrong, it needs but an accident to prevent it, and there are so many.”