The years had not dealt quite as kindly with Joanna as with Paul. She was short and thin and colourless; one of those whitey-brown-threads of women who are constantly being overlooked by their friends and neighbours, and whose natural abode is supposed to be the outlying districts of other people's lives. And she took no pains to make herself attractive, as a vainer girl would have done; for she was as yet young enough to cherish that admirable and false belief that folks love us according to our excellencies. We all begin life well grounded in this groundless faith, and we rejoice in it as long as we are youthful enough to fancy that our excellencies will be many; but as we grow older and see how few of these there be, and those not of the finest water, we thank heaven for showing us that the aforesaid dogma was nothing but the rankest heresy.
Joanna was the raw material out of which nuns and sisters of mercy are made. Had she belonged to a different faith and a different age, she would have developed into a model lady-abbess. To her, love was a matter of no interest; it formed no part of the programme of life. Such romance as her nature possessed had been lavished upon Mrs. Crozier, the wife of one of the ministers in her father's penultimate circuit. No lover ever adored his mistress, and no devotee his saint, more absorbingly than Joanna adored Mrs. Crozier.
There is always something pathetic in the adoration of a young girl for an older woman; she gives so much, and can, of necessity, receive so little; yet, with the exception of motherhood, it is perhaps the most unselfish affection which a woman's life can hold. The girl worships with her whole heart, and pours out all the early romance of her nature on this particular shrine; and the woman either suffers this devotion patiently, or snubs it cruelly—according as she happens to be amiable or the reverse.
Mrs. Crozier was kind to Joanna on the whole; but she had not much time to waste on girls, for she was a busy woman.
There are some people who go through life putting all their eggs into one basket. There are others who avoid this mistake, but fall into the equally unlucky one of putting their eggs into baskets which are already full. These erring mortals pour out the treasures of their love at the feet of those whose coffers are overflowing, and spend their days in the thankless task of waiting upon such as are well served. Joanna Seaton was one of these. It was her fate in life to give love where she could only receive friendship, and friendship where she could only receive toleration. Had she given otherwise and otherwhere, her rewards might have been different. But what man or woman can bestow their affection as their wisdom prompts?
Therefore there was a tragic element in Joanna's lot. But when "gorgeous Tragedy" puts off her "sceptred pall" and dresses like a dowdy little spinster, men are too blind to recognize and too hard to pity her. So she bears her burden in silence.
"What do you mean to do when you leave Oxford?" asked Joanna of Paul one day.
"I shall take a First and go to the Bar, and then into Parliament," replied her brother promptly. Paul always knew his own mind—a branch of knowledge which is useful in this world.
"But suppose you fail?" suggested Joanna.
"I shall not fail."