"Unquestionably. To my mind, friendship which implies anything less than that is meaningless. However, there is no need for heroics: Mrs. Tregonell is not going to put me to the test."
"I hope not. She is very sweet. I should be deeply pained if she were to go wrong. But do you know that my mother does not at all like her manner with the Baron. My sister and I are much more liberal-minded, don't you know; and we can understand that all she says and does is mere frivolity—high spirits which must find some outlet. But what surprises me is that she should be so gay and light-hearted after the dreadful events of her life. If such things had happened to me, I should inevitably have gone over to Rome, and buried myself in the severest conventual order that I could find."
"Yes, there have been sad events in her life: but I think she chose the wiser course in doing her duty by the aunt who brought her up, than in self-immolation of that kind," answered Jessie, with her thin lips drawn to the firmest line they were capable of assuming.
"But think what she must have suffered last year when that poor man was killed. I remember meeting him at dinner when they were first engaged. Such an interesting face—the countenance of a poet. I could fancy Shelley or Keats exactly like him."
"We have their portraits," said Jessie, intolerant of gush. "There is no scope for fancy."
"But I think he really was a little like Keats—consumptive looking, too, which carried out the idea. How utterly dreadful it must have been for Mrs. Tregonell when he met his death, so suddenly, so awfully, while he was a guest under her roof. How did she bear it?"
"Very quietly. She had borne the pain of breaking her engagement for a principle, a mistaken one, as I think. His death could hardly have given her worse pain."
"But it was such an awful death."
"Awful in its suddenness, that is all—not more awful than the death of any one of our English soldiers who fell in Zululand the other day. After all, the mode and manner of death is only a detail, and, so long as the physical pain is not severe, an insignificant detail. The one stupendous fact for the survivor remains always the same. We had a friend and he is gone—for ever, for all we know."
There was the faint sound of a sob in her voice as she finished speaking.