"You are foolish to spoil Helen, dear John," she said. "With careful training I don't despair of making a good woman of her yet. But you must leave her to me, and her caprices must not be gratified."
"I thought her desire to learn the violin was innocent enough."
"Nonsense, John! you know nothing about children and their training. Girls were content with the piano in my young days; and I consider the modern girl's craze for violin playing extremely unfeminine. No; that violin must go back to-morrow. Helen's notions are far too fantastic already."
There was a suspicion of returning sharpness in Mrs. Desmond's tone, and her husband wisely forbore to press the subject further. On his way to dress for dinner he lingered for a few moments wistfully outside Helen's closed door. But neither then nor later, when (after Mrs. Desmond had retired on the plea of a headache, leaving the colonel free to follow his own devices), he returned, and knocking gently, called Helen, did any success reward his efforts to bring a crumb of consolation to the poor child. Judging by her silence that she must have fallen asleep, Colonel Desmond retired to his smoking-room and comforted himself by reflecting that Helen had certainly been naughty and probably deserved whatever punishment might be meted out to her. Then he recalled his wife's angelic goodness and smiled, thinking that such a woman could not possibly be very severe. Finally, as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe before going to bed, he decided that only women could understand girls, and that Helen would thank him some day for having given her such a mother. But these comforting reflections did not prevent a wistful face, not unlike Helen's own, from peering out at him from amongst the dark shadows on the staircase, dimly lit by his solitary candle, a face that had looked up into his once and had whispered with failing voice, "Take care of the child and bring her safe to me." For our responsibilities are our own, and we cannot safely delegate them even to persons of angelic goodness.
CHAPTER II.
COUSIN MARY.
"I think that you are wrong, Margaret. Young people must be more or less the children of their generation."
The speaker was a cousin of Mrs. Desmond's, a certain Miss Macleod, or Cousin Mary as she was generally called by the younger members of her acquaintances. Mary Macleod lived in a northern county, and she and Mrs. Desmond had never been close friends, but circumstances having brought the former to London for a time, she had accepted her cousin's invitation to spend a week at Bloomsbury Square.
Cousin Mary was a person to whom all confided their troubles, and although she had only been in the house an hour or so, Mrs. Desmond was already launched on her favourite topic, the miseries resulting from the present pernicious system of bringing up young people. Mrs. Desmond was rather a self-centred person, and she was quite unconscious that her remarks were not approving themselves to her listener.