It indicated a good deal of spirit on the part of Valentia Seldom and her daughter thus to return to the home of their ancestors.
Mrs. Seldom was a cousin of the man who had sold the estate. Her daughter Vennie, brought up in a school at Florence, had never seen Nevilton, and it was with the idea of taking advantage for the girl’s sake of their old prestige in that corner of England that Valentia accepted Mr. Romer’s offer and became the vicarage tenant.
The quarry-owner himself was influenced in carrying through this affair, by his anxiety, for the sake of his daughter, to secure a firmer footing with the aristocracy of the neighborhood. Here again, however, he was destined to disappointment: for once in possession of her twenty years’ lease the old lady showed not the least intention of letting herself be used as a social stepping-stone.
She had, indeed, under her own roof, cause enough for preoccupation and concern.
Her daughter—a little ghost-moth of a girl, of fragile delicacy—seemed entirely devoid of that mysterious magnetic attraction which lures to the side of most virgins the devotion of the opposite sex. She appeared perfectly content to remain forever in her tender maidenhood, and refused to exert the slightest effort to be “nice” to the charming young people her mother threw in her way. She belonged to that class of young girls who seem to be set apart by nature for other purposes than those of the propagation of the race.
Her wistful spirit, shrinking into itself like the leaves of a sensitive plant at the least approach of a rough hand, responded only to one passionate impulse, the impulse of religion.
She grew indeed so estranged from the normal world, that it was not only Valentia who concealed the thought that when she left the earth the ancient race of Seldoms would leave it with her.
Nor was it only in regard to her child’s religious obsession that the lady suffered. She had flatly refused to let her enter into anything but the coldest relations with “those dreadful people at the House”; and it was with a peculiar shock of dismay that she found that the girl was not literally obeying her. It was not, however, to the Romers themselves that Vennie made her shy overtures, but to a luckless little relative of that family now domiciled with them as companion to Gladys Romer.
This young dependent, reputed in the village to be of Italian origin, struck the gentle heart of the last of the Seldoms with indescribable pity. She could not altogether define the impression the girl produced upon her, but it was a singularly oppressive one, and it vexed and troubled her.