MY FOURTH STAGE
Oh, the little more, and how much it is!
R. Browing.
Mrs. Milton-Cleave had one weakness—she was possessed by an inordinate desire for influence. This made her always eagerly anxious to be interesting both in her conversation and in her letters, and to this end she exerted herself with unwearying activity. She liked influencing Mr. Blackthorne, and spared no pains on him that afternoon; and indeed the curate was a good deal flattered by her friendship, and considered her one of the most clever and charming women he had ever met.
Sigismund and Gertrude returned to the ordinary world just as Mrs. Milton-Cleave was saying good-bye to the hostess. She glanced at them searchingly.
“Good-bye, Gertrude,” she said a little coldly. “Did you win at tennis?”
“Indeed we did,” said Gertrude, smiling. “We came off with flying colours. It was a love set.”
The girl was looking more beautiful than ever, and there was a tell-tale colour in her cheeks and an unusual light in her soft grey eyes. As for Zaluski, he was so evidently in love, and had the audacity to look so supremely happy, that Mrs. Milton-Cleave was more than ever impressed with the gravity of the situation. The curate handed her into her victoria, and she drove home through the sheltered lanes musing sadly over the story she had heard, and wondering what Gertrude’s future would be. When she reached home, however, the affair was driven from her thoughts by her children, of whom she was devotedly fond. They came running to meet her, frisking like so many kittens round her as she went upstairs to her room, and begging to stay with her while she dressed for dinner. During dinner she was engrossed with her husband; but afterwards, when she was alone in the drawing-room, I found my opportunity for working on her restless mind.
“Dear me,” she exclaimed, throwing aside the newspaper she had just taken up, “I ought to write to Mrs. Selldon at Dulminster about that G.F.S. girl!”
As a matter of fact she ought not to have written then, the letter might well have waited till the morning, and she was over-tired and needed rest. But I was glad to see her take up her pen, for I knew I should come in most conveniently to fill up the second side of the sheet.
Before long Jane Stiggins, the member who had migrated from Muddleton to Dulminster, had been duly reported, wound up, and made over to the Archdeacon’s wife. Then the tired hand paused. What more could she say to her friend?