As the days went thus slowly by it soon came to pass that Baynell could not be silent. Her presence here flattered him, but he did not reflect that the library was the gathering-place of all the family; it held, too, the only fire, except his own, in the house, a fact which he, forgetful of the scarcity of fuel which the army had occasioned, did not appreciate. She could hardly withdraw, and, with her work in her hand, she could not ignore her uncle's guest.
Sometimes he caught himself covertly studying her expression, marvelling at its complete absorption;—at the strange fact that so slight a token of such deep introspection showed on the surface. It was like some expanse of still, clear waters—one can only know that here are unmeasured fathoms, abysses of unexplored depths. Her meditation, her obvious brooding thought, seemed significant; yet sometimes he was prone to deem this merely the cast of her noble, reflective features, her expansive brow, the comprehensive intelligence of her limpid eyes,—all so beautiful, yet endowed with something far beyond mere beauty. Now and again he read aloud a passage which specially struck his attention, and occasionally her comments jarred on his preconceived opinion of her, or, rather, of what a woman so young, so favored, so graciously endowed, ought to feel and think. One day, particularly, he was much impressed by this. Some benignant philosopher, reaching out both hands to the happy time of the millennium, had given voice to the theory that man's inhumanity to man, particularly in the more cultured circles, was the result of scant mutual knowledge—if we but knew the sorrows of others, how hate would be metamorphosed to pity, the bruised reed unbroken! This sentiment mightily pleased Captain Baynell, and he read it aloud.
It seemed potently to arrest her attention. She laid her work down on her knee and gazed steadily at him.
"If we could know the secret heartache—the blighted aspiration—the denied longing—the bruised pride of others?"
As he signified assent, she gazed steadily at him for a moment longer in silence. Then—
"If we only knew!" she cried,—"Christian brethren,—what a laughing, jeering, gibing world we should be!"
Once more she took her work in her hands, once more exclaimed, "If we only knew!" and paused to laugh aloud with a low icy tone. Then she inserted the dexterous needle into the fashioning of the "shell" and bent her reflective, smiling face over the swift serpentines of the "zephyr."
Captain Baynell was shocked in some sort. This frank unconscious cynicism was out of keeping with so much grace and charm. He was hardly ready to argue the question. He was dismayed by a sense of futility. If she had thought this, it was enough to show her inmost nature. A substituted, cultivated conviction does not uproot the spontaneous productions of the mind. It is only foisted in their midst. He was silent in his turn, and presently fell to fluttering the leaves of his book and reading with slight interest and only a superficial appearance of absorption.
If we only knew the sorrows of others! Mrs. Gwynn's satiric eyes glowed with the uncomfortable thought that hers at all events had been public enough. If openness be a claim for sympathy, she might well be entitled to receive balm of all her world. It seared every sensitive fibre within her to realize how much of her intimate inner life they all knew,—her friends, who masked this knowledge with a casual face, but talked over her foolish miseries among themselves with the mingled gusto of gossip, the superiority of contemptuous commiseration, and a rabid zest of speculation concerning such poor reserves as she had been able to maintain. Much of this drifted back to her knowledge through her old colored nurse, who since her childhood had remained her special attendant, though now officiating as cook to the Roscoe household, and by all respectfully called "Aunt Chaney." Her association with other cooks and ladies' maids enabled her to become well informed as to what was said and known in other households of these affairs. As Aunt Chaney detailed the gossip, she herself would burst into painful tears at the humiliating disclosures, exclaiming ever and anon, "Oh, de debbil was busy, shorely, de day dee married dat man!"
But despite her burden of sympathetic woe, she would gather her powers to compass a debonair assurance toward observant outsiders and optimistically toss her head. "De man was good-looking to destraction," she would loftily asseverate, in defence of the situation, "and he didn't live long, nohow."