"Oh, oh, poor dear thing! How too terrible! I am sure Douglas would go on exactly like that if I ever threw him over. But of course I never could. It's the most dreadful thing I ever heard of—how anyone could be so heartless!"
"How indeed!" sadly ejaculated Lady Rossiter. "And you know, Iris, by some miracle of science, he actually did recover, and can walk as well as you or I. So if she had been steadfast, they would have been married by this time, and she would have been in a very different position now."
"It's like a book," said Iris, awe-stricken. "But she couldn't have cared for him really."
"Indeed, no! I thank God from the bottom of my heart that poor Clarence found out in time what a mistake he had made. He was younger than she, poor boy, and it was all thoroughly unsuitable. He has found his ideal since then."
Iris looked a shade disappointed.
"Ah, my dear, you are thinking that nothing is like first love—and in a way it's true. But there's another kind of love, too, that comes later, when one has outgrown the personal part of it all—the divine selfishness that is so sweet and natural and inevitable in youth. And that is the love, the great universal tenderness, that comes to one later on, and that seeks a widening circle, and a bigger outlet, in order to spend itself on others. But you know nothing about that yet, childie dear. How should you, indeed?"
Very few people like to be told that there is anything in the gamut of the emotions of which they know nothing, and Iris looked with rather an unresponsive eye at her dear Lady Rossiter.
"After all," said that lady, rendering her usual smiling acknowledgment to the Deity, "after all, there are many compensations for growing old, in God's world."
The aphorism admitted not at all of contradiction, and hardly of agreement, and Iris accordingly relapsed into silence.
"I will let you know about my little tea-party for the staff," was Lady Rossiter's last remark. "They will like to see your bright face and pretty frock, dear. Their lives are very drab."