“I came in here knowing I should be quiet, and it is very quiet.”
“It is the end of July. In another week we shall be more quiet still, and after that, when the country people come, we shall not know where to turn. When you come back from abroad or from your sojourn by the sea we shall be as you always see us.”
“I think I will have another muffin.”
“I would, madam. I will tell them to put plenty of butter on it. And a pot of tea, and a little more cream?”
“Yes,” said Regina, rather weakly. The girl disappeared again, and Regina sat back in her chair, a very comfortable one, and felt that it was pleasant to be ministered to, and then fell to thinking about herself again. How strange that she had never noticed any change in Alfred! He had never seemed to find her wanting in any way. More than once, even of late years, he had told her that the girls would never be a patch upon her for looks, and she had accepted his tribute to her charms in all good faith. And then she turned to the glass again and regarded herself with new eyes—critical eyes—and she saw that her dress was hideous, her bonnet a travesty, her hair, fine in quality and very decent in color, made nothing of, her gloves were too small or her hands too large. What did it matter, the result was the same; she was inelegant, unfashionable, grotesquely stout—she was all wrong, and it seemed as if all she had done by her work for the regeneration of womanhood had been to cut herself adrift from her own husband.
I have said that Regina Whittaker was a very remarkable character, and I have tried to show that she was a woman who was accustomed to judge for herself in most circumstances of life, and who, even if she took the wrong line, took it on her own, so to speak. Now, in what I may honestly say was the bitterest moment of her life, she decided, judged and determined on her own line of action just as she had done in previous times. At this moment the relay of muffin and fresh tea arrived, and Regina, with a smile of thanks, began with an excellent appetite to eat the second half of her meal, and as she ate her thoughts were working busily.
Alfred had fallen a victim to a hussy! That she was a hussy of tender years, as compared with Regina herself, was evident. There was no evidence to prove it, but once the idea had entered Regina’s mind it remained there and throve apace. This ignorant, youthful, gay little hussy must be supplanted, her influence must be undermined, and Alfred must be lured back to his original nobility. It was curious that no shadow of blame for the noble Alfred presented itself to Regina. If he had been unfaithful it was because he had been tempted by a hussy from the allegiance which had stood the test of over twenty years. If he had left her for other divinities it was because she had not made herself sufficiently alluring to him; and Regina, as she ate the last piece of the second muffin, determined there and then that she would mend her ways.
“I will go to a beauty doctor,” she told herself. “I will get rid of every blemish that has lessened my attractions for him; I will put myself in the hands of an expert dressmaker; she shall dress me like a fashion-plate; I will be young, I will be slim, I will be attractive, I will win my husband’s heart back again.”
Then her thoughts ran towards the Society for the Regeneration of Women—that darling project of her later years, which she now realized had cost her very dear. From that she must free herself; not publicly, not with any ostensible reason, except that she had worked sufficiently long. Others must take the reins from her hands and she must put forward the plea that new blood was necessary, even essential, in all such undertakings. When she had arrived at this point she was already quite cheerful. She took out her purse from her black and gold bag and deposited a bright new sixpence under her muffin plate as a delicate little reward to the girl whose kindly words had been her first solace, then satisfied herself with a long look at Julia’s earrings, and then she opened the little case which contained the tie pin that she intended as an offering to her lord and master. This she determined she would not present to him. A curious fancy took possession of her that she would give him some little symbol of her unaltered affection for him. She had never heard that pink coral was coupled with any particular meaning; it had no place among what may be called the birthday stones. Now, Alfred’s birthday was in October, so she would choose him an opal—yes, a little tie pin of opals with a single diamond like a crystallized tear-drop, and she could say to him, “This opal is to bring you luck in your later years, and the diamond has a meaning which I will tell you at some future time—not now.”
Then Regina rose up, strong in her new resolve, and, having paid her money at the desk, went out into the summer sunshine.