Alas, thrice-gentle Cassio,
My advocation is not now in tune;
My lord is not my lord; nor should I know him,
Were he in favour, as in humour, alter'd.
—Othello.
Whatever Lady Sarah may have thought, Mrs. Palmer used to consider Dolly a most fortunate girl, and she used to say so, not a little to Lady Sarah's annoyance.
'Extremely fortunate,' repeats Dolly's mamma, looking thoughtfully at her fat satin shoes. 'What a lottery life is! I was as pretty as Dolly, and yet dear Stanham had not anything like Robert's excellent prospects. Even the Ad——Don't go, Sarah.'
Poor Lady Sarah would start up, with an impatient movement, and walk across the room to get away from Philippa's retrospections. They were almost more than she had patience for just then. She could scarcely have found patience for Philippa herself, if it had not been that she was Dolly's mother. What did she mean by her purrings and self-congratulations? Lady Sarah used to feel most doubtful about Dolly's good fortune just when Philippa was most enthusiastic on the subject, or when Robert himself was pointing out his excellent prospects in his lucid way.
Philippa would listen, nodding languid approbation. Dolly would make believe to laugh at Robert's accounts of his coming honours; but it was easy to see that it was only make-believe incredulity.
Her aunt could read the girl's sweet conviction in her eyes, and she loved her for it. Once, remembering her own youth, this fantastic woman had made a vow never, so long as she lived, to interfere in the course of true love. True love! Is this true love, when one person is in love with a phantom, another with an image reflected in a glass? True love is something more than phantoms, than images and shadows; and yet stirred by phantoms and living among shadows, its faint dreams come to life.
Lady Sarah was standing by the bookcase, in a sort of zigzag mind of her own old times and of Dolly's to-day. She had taken a book from the shelf—a dusty volume of Burns's poems—upon the fly-leaf of which the name of another Robert Henley was written. She holds the book in her hand, looks at the crooked writing—'S. V., from Robert Henley, May, 1808.' She beats the two dusty covers together, and puts it back into its place again. That is all her story. Philippa never heard of it, Robert never heard of it, nor did he know that Lady Sarah loved his name—which had been his father's too—better than she loved him. 'Perhaps her happiness had all gone to Dolly,' the widow thought, as she stood, with a troubled sort of smile on her face, looking at the two young people through a pane of glass; and then, like a good woman as she is, tries to silence her misgivings into a little prayer for their happiness.
Let us do justice to the reluctant prayers that people offer up. They are not the less true because they are half-hearted and because those who pray would sometimes gladly be spared an answer to their petitions. Poor Lady Sarah! her prayers seemed too much answered as she watched Dolly day by day more and more radiant and absorbed.
'My dear creature, what are you doing with all those dusty books? Can you see our young people?' says Mrs. Palmer, languidly looking over her arm-chair. 'I expect Colonel Witherington this afternoon. He admires Dolly excessively, Sarah; and I really think he might have proposed, if Robert had not been so determined to carry her off. You dear old thing, forgive me; I don't believe she would ever have married at all if I had not come home. You are in the clouds, you know. I remember saying so to Hawtry at Trincomalee. I should have disowned her if she had turned out an old maid. I know it. I detest old maids. The Admiral has a perfect craze for them, and they all adore him. I should like you to see Miss M'Grudder—there never was anything so ludicrous, asthmatic, sentimental—frantic. We must introduce Miss Moineaux to him, and the Morgan girls. I often wonder how he ever came to marry a widow, and I tell him so. It was a great mistake. Can you believe it?—Hawtry now writes that second marriages are no marriages at all. Perhaps you agree with him? I'm sure Dolly is quite ready to do so. I never saw a girl so changed—never. We have lost her, my dear; make up your mind to it. She is Robert, not Dolly any more—no thought for any one else, not for me, dear child! And don't you flatter yourself she will ever ... Dear me! Gone? What an extraordinary creature poor Sarah is! touched, certainly; and such a wet blanket!'