* * * * *
This is Lavinia Dorman's last day with me, and I know she is really sorry to go, in spite of a sort of pleasurable responsibility and excitement she feels in managing Sylvia's affairs for a time.
She waked up with a bad headache—a rare thing for her—and after breakfast seemed so forlorn and blue that I coaxed her into my room and petted her for a while, almost as I would one of the children; and as she no longer conceals the fact of the false front from me, I took it off, brushed and brushed her lovely hair until it grew supple and alive, and began to glisten, and the pain gradually slipped through it into the air; then I drew it up cushionwise from her forehead and coiled it loosely on top, and she, declaring that my fingers had a magic touch, spent the rest of the morning at my desk in writing letters.
The lovable woman who has no one specially to love her is a common tragedy of everyday life. Strangely enough it more often draws ridicule than sympathy, and it seems to be always considered the woman's own fault, instead of a combination of circumstances, woven often of self-sacrifice, mistaken duty, and the studied suppression of natural emotions.
I think that both Miss Lavinia and Martin Cortright dread the going back to their old existence, and yet I am not sure that either of them would consent to change it in any way, in spite of their growlings at the modern conditions of life in New York. They have learned to lean upon the very restrictions that cramp them, until the idea of cutting free seems as impossible as for the bulky woman to sever the stay-lace that at once suffocates and supports her.
Martin Cortright stayed to luncheon to-day. Not that it is an unusual occurrence, but he wished to have a long afternoon to finish reading a certain portion of his manuscript to Miss Lavinia before her flitting in the morning.
We were seated at the table when she came in hurriedly, apologizing for being late, saying that she had become so absorbed in finishing her letters that she did not realize that it was even noon. I did not look at her particularly until a few moments later, when Martin, after fussing with his bread a good deal, looked up and said, with a charming smile, "What a very becoming gown you have on to-day, Miss Lavinia."
"Yes," said father, "I was thinking precisely the same thing myself, so you see that in spite of our condemning your sex for paying so much attention to clothes, we men are the first to note the result of them."
Miss Lavinia looked puzzled. She was too much the politic woman of the world to say that the dimity gown was the same one that she had worn for the two or three days previous; besides, the fact would have cast a doubt upon their judgment, and she was particular in all such little details of good breeding; so she parried the compliment deftly, and straightway fell to pondering as to what circumstance the remark might refer. Glancing toward the open window, she caught a reflection of herself where the glass, backed by the dark green curtain, made a mirror. She had forgotten to rearrange her hair, and her burnished silver-shot locks remained rolled back lightly from her white forehead without the ugly, concealing front! I rejoiced inwardly, for the spontaneous tribute to the improvement by those two dear, stupid, discriminating men, has settled the fronts in a way in which no arguments of mine could, for to-night she came to dinner not only with her own emancipated hair, but wearing a bit of red geranium stuck fetchingly in the puff.
* * * * *