The Three Fates

by F. Marion Crawford

Grace was frightened, for the first time in her life, but she did her best to hide it.

“What difference does it make to you, whether I mean it or not?” she inquired with a rather scornful smile.

“This difference—that if you think such things, you and I may as well part company before we quarrel any further.”

“Ah—you love him, then? I did not know.” Grace laughed nervously.

“I do not love him, but if I did I should not be ashamed to say so to you or to the whole world. But I like him very, very much, and I will not hear him talked of as you talk of him. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly. Nothing could be clearer,” said Grace with a contemptuous curl of the lip.

“Then I hope you will remember,” Constance answered.

Grace did remember. Indeed, for some time she could think of nothing else. It seemed clear enough to her that something more than friendship was needed to account for the emotion she had seen in her sister’s face. It was the first time in her recollection, too, that Constance had ever been really angry, and Grace was not inclined to rouse her anger a second time. She changed her tactics and ignored George Wood altogether, never mentioning him nor reading anything that he sent to Constance. But this mode of treating the question proved unsatisfactory, for it was clear that Wood wrote often, and there was nothing to prove that Constance did not answer all his letters. Fortunately the two sisters were rarely alone together during the rest of the summer, and their opportunities of disagreeing were not numerous. They were not in reality as fond of each other as the world thought, or as they appeared to be. Their natures were too different, and at the same time the difference was not of that kind in which each character seems to fill a want in the other. On the contrary the points in which they were unlike were precisely those which most irritated the other’s sensibilities. They had never before quarrelled nor been so near to a quarrel as they were in the course of the conversation just recorded, but they were in reality very far from being harmonious.

The devoted affection of their mother had kept them together while she had lived, and, to some extent, had survived her, the memory of her still exercising a strong influence over both. Constance, too, was naturally very pacific, and rarely resented anything Grace said, in jest or in earnest. Grace was often annoyed by what she called her sister’s sweetness, and it was that very quality which prevented the other from retaliating. She had now shown that she could turn, and fiercely, if once aroused, and Grace respected her the more for having shown that she had a temper.

Enough has been said to show that George’s fear that Constance would think less well of him through Grace’s influence, was without foundation. She even went so far as to send for him as soon as she returned to New York in the autumn. It was a strange meeting, for there was constraint on both sides, and at the same time each felt the necessity of showing the other that no change had taken place for the worse in their mutual relations.