Then she rang the bell, and sent off her note with directions for its immediate transmission. Henry must take it at once. If Miss Douglas was not at home, let him find out where she had gone, and follow her. There was no answer. Only he must be quite sure she got it;—and pretty Mrs. Lushington sank back on her sofa, with the pleasing reflection that she had done what she called "a neat stroke of business, vigorous, conclusive, and compromising nobody if it was ever found out!"
She saw her way now clearly enough. On Satanella's refusal of her veteran admirer, she calculated as surely as on her acceptance of an invitation to meet Daisy at dinner, particularly with so dangerous a competitor as Bessie Gordon in the field. That last touch she considered worthy of her diplomacy. But, judging by herself, she was of opinion that Miss Douglas would so modify her negative as to retain the General in the vicinity of her charms, contemplating from day to day the fair prospect that was never to be his own. In such an ignominious state men are to be caught on the rebound, and he must ere long prove an easy victim to her kinder fascinations, take his place, submissively enough, with the other captives in the train of his conqueror. It would be very nice, she thought, to secure him, and after that she could turn her attention to Daisy, for Mrs. Lushington was never so happy as when she had succeeded in detaching a gentleman from the lady of his affections, if, in so doing, she inflicted on the latter the sorrow of a wounded spirit and the pain of a vexed heart.
Therefore had she many enemies of her own sex, ever on the watch to catch her tripping, and once down must have expected no quarter from these gentle combatants.
A generous, masculine-minded woman, who is above these pretty vanities and rivalries, enjoys considerable immunity in that society, of which the laws are made by her sisters-in-arms, but they will not forgive the greedy, unreasonable spoiler, who eyes, covets, and abstracts the property of others—who, to use their own expressive words, "takes their men from them, while all the time she has got enough and to spare of her own!"
OFF AND ON
But even a woman cannot calculate with certainty on what another woman will or will not do under given circumstances. The greatest generals have been defeated by unforeseen obstacles. A night's rain or a sandy road may foil the wisest strategy, destroy the nicest combinations.