LXXXVI
Verena Raby to Richard Haven
Dear Richard,—You were very good to reply so quickly about poor Blanche’s husband. I wish other people were as prompt and true to their word. Dr. Else must now, I suppose, gang the gait that the stars have prescribed for him; but of course one has to remember that my interference might be also in the stellar programme.
What I think I most want is advice as to the disposition of money after I am dead. I suppose I ought to be giving it to my own needy relations while I am alive. There is poor Letitia, for one. That husband of hers does nothing to add to his pension, and I know she is in need of all kinds of things. Roy is on my mind too. Not that his father is not well off, but fathers and sons so often fail to understand each other, and I feel sure that the boy, if helped a little, might become serious and develop into a self-supporting man. At present he seems to do nothing but fall in and out of love. I do not intend to blame him for that, but I should like to see more stability. He sends me the fullest account of his young ladies, each of whom is perfect in turn. How lovely to be young and absurd and not ashamed of inconstancy! As we grow older we acquire such stupid cautions.
V.
LXXXVII
Richard Haven to Verena Raby
Look here, Verena, I wish you wouldn’t say fulsome things about my promptness and so forth. My promptness is sheer self-indulgence, to prevent the bore of accumulated correspondence. As for my sagacity, don’t be so sure about it. You may be taken in by my brevity and the confidence of it all; and I may be utterly wrong about everything. Why not?
Meanwhile, I have to remark that either everything is in the stellar programme (as you so happily call Fate) or nothing is. If your suggested interference with the bibulous proclivities of Dr. Else is written there, so is my dissuasion of you.