"I can't tell how she feels," answered the Vicar doubtfully; "but she does not look so happy as she did when Violet was at home."
"The fact is she gives way too much," exclaimed active little Mrs. Scobel, who had never given way in her life. "When she has a head-ache she lies in bed, and has the venetian blinds kept down, just as if she were dying. No wonder she looks pale and——"
"Etiolated," said the Vicar; "perishing for want of light. But I believe it's moral sunshine that is wanted there, my dear Fanny, say what you will."
Mr. Scobel was correct in his judgment. Pamela Winstanley was a most unhappy woman—an unhappy woman without one tangible cause of complaint. True that her daughter was banished; but she was banished with the mother's full consent. Her personal extravagances had been curtailed; but she was fain to admit that the curtailment was wise, necessary, and for her own future benefit. Her husband was all kindness; and surely she could not be angry with him if he seemed to grow younger every day—rejuvenated by regular habits and rustic life—while in her wan face the lines of care daily deepened, until it would have needed art far beyond the power of any modern Medea to conceal Time's ravages. Your modern Medeas are such poor creatures—loathsome as Horace's Canidia, but without her genius or her power.
"I am getting an old woman," sighed Mrs. Winstanley. "It is lucky I am not without resources against solitude and age."
Her resources were a tepid appreciation of modern idyllic poetry, as exemplified in the weaker poems of Tennyson, and the works of Adelaide Proctor and Jean Ingelow, a talent for embroidering conventional foliage and flowers on kitchen towelling, and for the laborious conversion of Nottingham braid into Venetian point-lace.
She had taken it into her head of late to withdraw herself altogether from society, save from such friends who liked her well enough, or were sufficiently perplexed as to the disposal of their lives, to waste an occasional hour over gossip and orange pekoe. She had now permanently assumed that rôle of an invalid which she had always somewhat affected.
"I am really not well enough to go to dinner-parties, Conrad," she said, when her husband politely argued against her refusal of an invitation, with just that mild entreaty which too plainly means, "I don't care a jot whether you go with me or stay at home."
"But, my dear Pamela, a little gaiety would give you a fillip."
"No, it would not, Conrad. It would worry me to go to Lady Ellangowan's in one of last season's dresses; and I quite agree with you that I must spend no more money with Theodore."