“What was she really like—that wasn’t her quite, was it?” asked Hylda, at last, leaning her chin on the hand which held the ‘cello she had been playing.
“Oh, yes, it’s Sybil Eglington, my dear, but done in wood; and she wasn’t the graven image that makes her out to be. That’s as most people saw her; as the fellow that painted her saw her; but she had another side to her. She disapproved of me rather, because I was squeezing the orange dry, and trying to find yesterday’s roses in to-morrow’s garden. But she didn’t shut her door in my face—it’s hard to do that to a Duchess; which is one of the few advantages of living naked in the street, as it were, with only the strawberry leaves to clothe you. No, Sybil Eglington was a woman who never had her chance. Your husband’s forbears were difficult, my dear. They didn’t exactly draw you out. She needed drawing out; and her husband drove her back into her corner, where she sulked rather till she died—died alone at Wiesbaden, with a German doctor, a stray curate, and a stuttering maid to wish her bon voyage. Yet I fancy she went glad enough, for she had no memories, not even an affaire to repent of, and to cherish. La, la! she wasn’t so stupid, Sybil there, and she was an ornament to her own sex and the despair of the other. His Serene Highness Heinrich of Saxe-Gunden fancied the task of breaking that ice, and he was an adept and an Apollo, but it broke his reputation instead.
“No doubt she is happy now. I shall probably never see!”
In spite of the poignant nature of the talk, Hylda could not but smile at the last words.
“Don’t despair,” she rejoined; “one star differeth from another star in glory, but that is no reason why they should not be on visiting terms.”
“My dear, you may laugh—you may laugh, but I am sixty-five, and I am not laughing at the idea of what company I may be obliged to keep presently. In any case I’m sure I shall not be comfortable. If I’m where she is, I shall be dull; if I’m where her husband is, I’ll have no reputation; and if there is one thing I want, it is a spotless reputation—sometime.”
Hylda laughed—the manner and the voice were so droll—but her face saddened too, and her big eyes with the drooping lashes looked up pensively at the portrait of her husband’s mother.
“Was it ever a happy family, or a lucky family?” she asked.
“It’s lucky now, and it ought to be happy now,” was the meaning reply.
Hylda made no answer, but caught the strings of the ‘cello lightly, and shook her head reprovingly, with a smile meant to be playful. For a moment she played, humming to herself, and then the Duchess touched the hand that was drawing the bow softly across the strings. She had behind her garishness a gift for sympathy and a keen intuition, delicacy, and allusiveness. She knew what to say and what to leave unsaid, when her heart was moved.