"Are women like that too?" thought the other, and she added out loud, "I am a woman too, but—" and left her sentence unfinished.
"No, you are not a woman, you are only a child," said Lady Joan; "the world is a place for you to play in. You were born to be happy, and you will never have to realize the things I have been telling you."
"I shall never be happy again," said the tired voice, with a sob.
"We all say that at eighteen; it comforts us sometimes to be the most miserable person in the world. Then we turn round a bit, and the sun comes out again, and some one gives us a tonic, and we endow a cot at the hospital, or give a farthing meal to five hundred brats in the East End, and then we go on again. You have never been in love before, of course?"
"Don't," moaned the other from the corner of the unsympathetic sofa.
The clear calm tones of her Mentor softened a little.
"I don't want to hurt you, Norah; I only mean that if you go in for loving once in a lifetime and that sort of thing, you really cannot properly understand the utter insouciance of an emotional man like Digby. He will love you more than ever now that you have come back, and you will be ten times happier than if you had been married straight off without any drawbacks. You have got rid of your ideals, to begin with, which most of them do not accomplish until after marriage, and that is always a risk. And you will find there is lots of time to be happy."
"Oh," said the other, in an altered tone, sitting upright, and speaking with startling emphasis, "and do you really mean to say that you think I should marry him now?"
Lady Joan did not turn a hair, vulgarly speaking; she felt she had done wonders already by getting rid of the battered, hopeless little voice, and she merely smiled to herself in the twilight in a triumphant, self-satisfied manner.
"You are to come home with me now, and I will send down for your maid, and you shall stay the night and get rested. I suppose you have eaten nothing for hours? Then how can you expect to take a proper view of things? Half the troubles of life come from a bad digestion; it's not romantic, but then I don't belong to your musical set."