“My dear Mildred, I have given you my advice, conscientiously. If you refuse to be guided by the wisdom of one who is your senior by a quarter of a century, the consequences of your obstinacy must be upon your own head. I only know that if I had as good a man as George Greswold for my husband”—with a little catch in her voice that sounded almost like a sob—“it would take a great deal more than a suspicion to part me from him. And now, Mildred, if you mean to dress for dinner, it is time you went to your room.”
In any other house, and with any other hostess, Mildred would have asked to be excused from sitting down to a formal dinner, and to spend the rest of the evening in her own room; but she knew her aunt’s dislike of any domestic irregularity, so she went away meekly, and put on the black lace gown which Louisa had laid out for her, and returned to the drawing-room at five minutes before eight.
She had been absent half an hour, but it seemed to her as if Miss Fausset had not stirred since she left her. The lamps were lighted, the fire had been made up, and the silver-gray brocade curtains were drawn; but the mistress of the house was sitting in exactly the same attitude on the sofa near the fire, erect, motionless, with her thoughtful gaze fixed upon the burning coals in the bright steel grate.
Aunt and niece dined tête-à-tête, ministered to by the experienced Franz, who was thorough master of his calling. All the details of that quiet dinner were of an elegant simplicity, but everything was perfect after its fashion, from the soup to the dessert, from the Irish damask to the old English silver—everything such as befitted the station of a lady who was often spoken of as the rich Miss Fausset.
The evening passed in mournful quiet. Mildred played two of Mozart’s sonatas at her aunt’s request—sonatas which she had played in her girlhood before the advent of her first and only lover, the lover who was now left widowed and desolate in that time which should have been the golden afternoon of life. As her fingers played those familiar movements, her mind was at Enderby with the husband she had deserted. How was he bearing his solitude? Would he shut his heart against her in anger, teach himself to live without her? She pictured him in his accustomed corner of the drawing-room, with his lamp-lit table, and pile of books and papers, and Pamela seated on the other side of the room, and the dogs lying on the hearth, and the room all aglow with flowers in the subdued light of the shaded lamps; so different from these colourless rooms of Miss Fausset’s, with their look as of vaulted halls, in which voices echo with hollow reverberations amidst empty space.
And then she thought of her own desolate life, and wondered what it was to be. She felt as if she had no strength of mind to chalk out a path for herself—to create for herself a mission. That sublime idea of living for others, of a life devoted to finding the lost ones of Israel—or nursing the sick—or teaching children the way of righteousness—left her cold. Her thoughts dwelt persistently upon her own loves, her own losses, her own ideal of happiness.
“I am of the earth earthy,” she thought despairingly, as her fingers lingered over a slow movement. “If I were like Clement Cancellor, my own individual sorrow would seem as nothing compared with that vast sum of human suffering which he is always trying to lessen.”
“May I ask what your plans are for the future, Mildred?” said Miss Fausset, laying aside a memoir of Bishop Selwyn, which she had been reading while her niece played. “I need hardly tell you that I shall be pleased to have you here as long as you care to stay; but I should like to know your scheme of life—in the event of your persistence in a separation from your husband.”
“I have made no definite plan, aunt; I shall spend the autumn in some quiet watering-place in Germany, and perhaps go to Italy for the winter.”
“Why to Italy?”