(“Never struck me before what pious initials mine are.”)
The very evening I received this letter I happened to be dining at the Probyn’s. As luck would have it, pretty Miss Freda was staying in the house, and she fell to my share. I always liked her, though of late I had felt rather angry with her for being carried away by the general storm of admiration and swept by it into an engagement with Lawrence Vaughan. She was a very pleasant, natural sort of talker, and she always treated me as an old friend. But she seemed to me, that night, a little less satisfied than usual with life. Perhaps it was merely the effect of the black lace dress which she wore, but I fancied her paler and thinner, and somehow she seemed all eyes.
“Where is Lawrence now?” I asked, as we went down to the dining-room.
“He is stationed at Dover,” she replied. “He was up here for a few hours yesterday; he came to say good-bye to me, for I am going to Bath next Monday with my father, who has been very rheumatic lately—and you know Bath is coming into fashion again, all the doctors recommend it.”
“Major Vaughan is there,” I said, “and has found the waters very good, I believe; any day, at twelve o’clock, you may see him getting out of his chair and going into the Pump Room on Derrick’s arm. I often wonder what outsiders think of them. It isn’t often, is it, that one sees a son absolutely giving up his life to his invalid father?”
She looked a little startled.
“I wish Lawrence could be more with Major Vaughan,” she said; “for he is his father’s favourite. You see he is such a good talker, and Derrick—well, he is absorbed in his books; and then he has such extravagant notions about war, he must be a very uncongenial companion to the poor Major.”
I devoured turbot in wrathful silence. Freda glanced at me.
“It is true, isn’t it, that he has quite given up his life to writing, and cares for nothing else?”
“Well, he has deliberately sacrificed his best chance of success by leaving London and burying himself in the provinces,” I replied drily; “and as to caring for nothing but writing, why he never gets more than two or three hours a day for it.” And then I gave her a minute account of his daily routine.