“I should have been miserable if you had admired her.”
“There is a face in the hall which I like ever so much better, and yet I doubt if it is a good face.”
“Which is that?”
“The face of the girl in that group of John Strangway’s three children.”
“That girl with the towsled hair and bright blue eyes. Yes, she must have been handsome—but she looks—I hope you won’t be shocked, but I really can’t help saying it—that girl looks a devil.”
“Poor soul! Her temper did not do much good for her. I believe she came to a melancholy end.”
“How was that?”
“She eloped from a school in Switzerland with an officer in a line regiment—a love match; but she went wrong a few years afterwards, left her husband, and died in poverty at Boulogne, I believe.”
“Another ghost!” exclaimed Juanita, dolefully. “Poor, lost soul, she must walk. I can’t help feeling sorry for her—married to a man who was unkind to her, perhaps, and whom she discovered unworthy of her love. And then years afterwards meeting some one worthier and better, whom she loved passionately. That is dreadful! Oh, Godfrey! if I had been married before I saw you—and we had met—and you had cared for me—God knows what kind of woman I should have been. Perhaps I should have been one of those poor souls who have a history, the women mother and her friends stare at and whisper about in the Park. Why are people so keenly interested in them, I wonder? Why can’t they leave them alone?”
“It would be charity to do so.”