"I don't want to do anything to vex you, mother, truly, I don't, but the Superior is very kind to me, and I do like going to see her. You know you always say you want me to do whatever makes me happiest." She spoke urgently and coaxingly, like the impulsive, impetuous child Alex, who had been used to beg for favours and privileges with all the confidence of a favourite.
Lady Isabel sighed again, but her face wore a touched, softened look, and she said resignedly, "So long as you cheer up, and don't vex your father by seeming doleful and uninterested in things.... Of course, girls now-a-days do take up good works and slummin' and all that sort of thing—but not till they are older than you are, darling, and then it's generally because they haven't married—at least," added Lady Isabel hurriedly, "people are sure to say it is that."
"I don't mind if they do," said Alex proudly, her mind full of Mother Gertrude's story.
"Well, I suppose you must do as you like—girls do, now-a-days."
Alex almost instinctively uttered the cry that, with successive generations, has passed from appeal to rebellion, then to assertion, and from the defiance of that assertion to a calm statement of facts. "It is my life. Can't I live my own life?"
"A woman who doesn't marry and who has eccentric tastes doesn't have much of a life. I could never bear thinking of it for any of you."
Alex was rather startled at the sadness in her mother's voice.
"But, mother, why? Lots of girls don't marry, and just live at home."
"As long as there is a home. But things alter, Alex. Your father and I, in the nature of things, can't go on livin' for ever, and then this house goes to Cedric. There is no country place, as you know—your great-grandfather sold everything he could lay his hands on, and we none of us have ever had enough ready money to think of buyin' even a small place in the country."
"But I thought we were quite rich."