"You sweet, simple blue-eyed dunce! How shamefully your guardian neglects your education! Never even heard of the Ellewomen? Why, they compose the most brilliant society all over the world. Iduna was a silly creature, with a large warm heart, and loved her husband devotedly; and in order to cure her of this arrant absurd folly she was carried away and shut up with the Ellewomen, very fair creatures always smiling sweetly. The more bitterly the foolish young wife wept and implored their pity, the more pleasantly they smiled at her; and when she examined them closely she found that despite their beauty they were quite hollow, were made with no hearts at all, and could compassionate no one. I have an abiding faith that they had Borgia hair, hazel eyes, red lips, and sloping white shoulders just like mine. They have peopled the world; a large colony settled in this country, we are nearly all Ellewomen now, and you are an ignorant, wretched little Iduna, minus the apples, and must get rid of your heart at once, in order to smile constantly as we do."
"Olga, don't libel yourself and society so unmercifully. Don't marry Mr. Congreve. Think how horrible it must be to spend all your life with a man whom you do not love!"
"I assure you, that will form no part either of his programme, or of mine. I shall have my 'societies' (charitable, of course), my daily drives, my 'Luncheons,' and box the opera with occasional supper at Delmonico's; and Mr. Congreve will have his Yacht affairs, and Wall Street 'corners' to look after, and will of course spend the majority of his evenings at that fascinating 'Century,' which really is the only thing that your quartz-souled guardian cherishes any affection for."
"But Mr. Palma is not married, and when you are Mr. Congreve's wife, of course instead of going to his club, your husband will expect to remain at home with you."
"That might be possible in the old-fashioned parsonage where you imbibed so many queer outlandish doctrines; but I do assure you, we have quite outgrown such an intolerable orthodox system of penance. The less married people see of each other these days, the fewer scalps dangle around the hearthstone. The customs of the matrimonial world have changed since that distant time when sacrificing to Juno as the Goddess of Wedlock, the gall was so carefully extracted from the victim and thrown behind the altar; implying that in married life all anger and bitterness should be exterminated. If Tacitus could revisit this much-civilized world of the nineteenth century, I wonder if he could find a nation who would tempt him to repeat what he once wrote concerning the sanctity of marriage among the Germans? 'There vice is not laughed at, and corruption is not called the fashion.' Mr. Silas Congreve is much too enlightened to prefer his slippers at home to his place at the club. As for sitting up as a rival in the 'Century,' female vanity never soared to so sublime a height of folly! and if Erle Palma were married forty times, his darling club would still hold the first place in his flinty affections. It must be a most marvellously attractive place, that bewitching 'Century,' to magnetize so completely the iron of his nature. I have my suspicion that one reason why the husbands cling so fondly to its beloved precincts is because it corresponds in some respects to the wonderful 'Peacestead' of the Æsir, whose strongest law was that 'no angry blow should be struck, and no spiteful word spoken within its limits.' Hence it is a tempting retreat from the cyclones and typhoons that sometimes sing among a man's Lares and Penates. In view of my own gilded matrimonial future, I reverently salute my ally—the 'Century!' There! Mamma calls you. Go trill like a canary at the Cantata, and waste no sighs on the smiling Ellewoman you leave behind you. Tell Octave to hurry my wine-chocolate."
She drew the girl to her, looked at her with sparkling merry eyes, and kissed her softly on each cheek.
When Regina reached the door and looked back, she saw that Olga had thrown herself face downward on the bed, and the hands were clasped above the tanged mass of ruddy hair.
During the drive, Mrs. Palma was unusually cheerful, almost loquacious, and her companion attributed the agreeable change in her generally reticent manner to maternal pride and pleasure in the contemplated alliance of her only child.
No reference was made to the subject, and when they reached Mrs. Brompton's, Regina was not grieved to learn that the rehearsal had been postponed until he following day, in consequence of the sickness of Professor Hurtzsel.
"Then Farley must take you home, after I get out at Mrs. St. Clare's.
The carriage can return for me about four o'clock."