"Was it violent while it lasted?"
"I don't remember anything about it; but mamma says it died a natural death after one season. Then she married Colonel Going."
"Why does Colonel Going remain away so long?"
"Ah! why, indeed, my dear? that is a thing nobody knows. There was no divorce, no formal separation, no esclandre of any kind; he merely put the seas between them, and is evidently determined on keeping them there. To me and my cousins of my own age the colonel is something of a myth; but mamma knew him well about six years ago, and says he was a very fascinating man, and upright, but rather stern."
"What a curiously unpleasant story! But didn't people talk?"
"Of course they did; they did even worse—they whispered; but her ladyship took no notice, and every one had to confess she behaved beautifully on the occasion. She gave out that her extreme delicacy alone (her constitution is of iron) prevented her accompanying him to India, and she withdrew from society, in the very height of the season, for two whole months. Surely decorum could no further go!"
"And then?"
"Why, then she reappeared, with her beauty much augmented from the enforced quiet and early hours—and with her mother."
"What is the mother like? One can hardly fancy Blanche with anything so tender as a mother."
"Like a fairy godmother, minus the magic wand and the energy of that famous person. A little old lady with a dark face, and eyes that would be keen and searching but for the discipline she has undergone. She has no opinions and no aims but what are her daughter's; and Blanche rules her—as she rules every other member of her household—with a rod of iron."