“Oh, my dear,” said Mrs. Mowbray, “pray don't speak of that. We feel for you, I assure you. Nothing is more unpleasant than a bereavement. It makes such a change in all one's life, you know. And then black does not become some people; they persist in visiting, too; but then, do you know, they really look to me like perfect frights. Not that you look otherwise than well, dear Miss Dalton. In fact, I should think that in any dress you would look perfectly charming; but that is because you are a brunette. Some complexions are positively out of all keeping with black. Have you ever noticed that? Oh yes, dear Miss Dalton,” continued Mrs. Mowbray, after a short pause. “Brunettes are best in black—mark my words, now; and blondes are never effective in that color. They do better in bright colors. It is singular, isn't it? You, now, my dear, may wear black with impunity; and since you are called on in the mysterious dispensation of Providence to mourn, you ought at least to be grateful that you are a brunette. If you were a blonde, I really do not know what would ever become of you. Now, I am a blonde—but in spite of that I have been called on to mourn. It—it was a child.”
As Mrs. Mowbray said this she applied the handkerchief and smelling-bottle for a few minutes.
“A child!” said Edith, in wonder.
“Yes, dear—a sweet son, aged twelve, leaving me to mourn over him. And as I was saying, my mourning did not become my complexion at all. That was what troubled me so. Really, a blonde ought never to lose friends—it is so unbecoming. Positively, Providence ought to arrange things differently.”
“It would be indeed well if blondes or any other people could be saved from sorrow,” said Edith.
“It would be charming, would it not?” said Mrs. Mowbray. “Now, when my child died, I mourned for him most deeply—indeed, as deep as that,” she said, stretching out her hands so as to measure a space of about eighteen inches—“most deeply: a border around the skirt of solid crape half a yard wide; bonnet smothered in crape; and really and positively I myself was literally all crape, I do believe; and with my light complexion, what people could have thought, I'm sure I do not know.”
“There is not much to choose between mother and son,” thought Edith. “They are capable of any baseness, they are so heartless. There is no hope here.” Yet in spite of such thoughts she did not shun them. Why not? How could an honorable nature like hers associate with such people? Between them and herself was a deep gulf, and no sympathy between them was possible. The reason why she did not shun them lay solely in her own loneliness. Any thing in the shape of a human being was welcome rather than otherwise, and even people whom she despised served to mitigate the gloom of her situation. They made the time pass by, and that of itself was something.
“I went into half-mourning as soon as I could,” continued Mrs. Mowbray; “but even half-mourning was very disagreeable. You may depend upon it, no shade of black ought ever to be brought near a blonde. Half-mourning is quite as bad as deep mourning.”
“You must have had very much to bear,” said Edith, absently.
“I should think I had. I really could not go into society, except, of course, to make calls, for that one must do, and even then I felt like a guy—for how absurd I must have looked with such an inharmonious adjustment of colors! But you, my dear Miss Dalton, seem made by nature to go in mourning.”