“Why did you never marry, aunt?”
“Because I was an heiress and a good match, and distrusted every man who wanted to marry me. I made a vow to myself, before my twentieth birthday, that I would never listen to words of love or give encouragement to a lover; and I most scrupulously kept that vow. I was called a handsome woman in those days; but I was not an attractive woman at any time. Nature had made me of too hard a clay.”
“It was a pity that you should keep love at arm’s length.”
“Far better than to have been fooled by shams, as I might have been. Don’t say any more about it, Mildred. I made my vow, and I kept it.”
Mildred resigned herself quietly to the idea of the dull slow life in Lewes Crescent. This duty of solacing her aunt’s declining days was the only duty that remained to her, except that wider duty of caring for the helpless and the wretched. And she told herself that there could be no better school in which to learn how to help others than the house of Miss Fausset, who had given so much of her life to the poor.
She had been told to consider her aunt’s house as her own, and that she was at liberty to receive Pamela there as much and as often as she liked. She did not think that Pamela would be long without a settled home. Mr. Stuart’s admiration and Lady Lochinvar’s wishes had been obvious; and Mildred daily expected a gushing letter from the fickle damsel, announcing her engagement to the Scotchman.
At four o’clock on the day after Mildred’s arrival, Miss Fausset’s friends began to drop in for afternoon tea and talk, and Mildred was surprised to see how her aunt rallied in that long-familiar society. It seemed as if the praises and flatteries of these people acted upon her like strong wine. The languid attitude, the weary expression of the pale drawn face, were put aside. She sat erect again; her eyes brightened, her ear was alert to follow three or four conversations at a time; nothing escaped her. Mildred began to think that she had lived upon the praises of men rather than upon the approval of conscience—that these assiduities and flatteries of a very commonplace circle were essential to her happiness.
Mr. Maltravers came after the vesper service, full of life and conversation, vigorous, self-satisfied, with an air of Papal dominion and Papal infallibility, so implicitly believed in by his flock that he had learned to believe as implicitly in himself. The flock was chiefly feminine, and worshipped without limit or reservation. There were husbands and sons, brothers and nephews, who went to church with their womenkind on Sunday; but these were for the most part without enthusiasm for Mr. Maltravers. Their idea of public worship went scarcely beyond considering Sunday morning service a respectable institution, not to be dispensed with lightly.
Mr. Maltravers welcomed Mildred with touching friendliness.
“I knew you would not fail your aunt in the hour of need,” he said; “and now I hope you are going to stay with her, and to take up her work when she lays it down, so that the golden thread of womanly charity may be unbroken.”