“Ah, yes!” and Violet’s quick sympathy showed itself in her expressive face. “I know how disappointed she was in him! She had been building up an ideal ‘Boy’ who did not exist.”
“And you have perhaps been building up an ideal Max who does not exist,” said her uncle good-humouredly. “What a pity it is that all the best and nicest women in the world will persist in imagining men to be so much better than they are! We don’t deserve it—we always fail to come up to the required standard.”
“Not always,” said Violet, her eyes beaming on him affectionately. “You never fail!”
The Major laughed.
“Oh, don’t idealise me, for Heaven’s sake, child!” he said. “I am just a bluff old man with a highly inflammable temper and an average sense of honour that’s all. Now try and put your sad thoughts away for the present, and take Miss Letty for your example,—you can’t do better. Always bright, always patient, always brave,—she takes everything God sends her in the same equable spirit, and does her best to keep a cheerful heart and cheerful face through everything.”
“Yes—but remember,” said Violet tremulously, “thanks to you, she has never known that her lover was false to her!”
The Major was taken aback by this pathetic observation, and pulled his white moustache dismally.
“True!—I forgot! She has never known.”
He gave a compassionate side-glance at his niece, and said no more. They returned to the hotel in silence,—but that afternoon Violet had a long quiet chat with Miss Letty all alone and told her frankly all the extent of her troubles, doubts and fears. After this her heart was considerably relieved, and she felt more resigned. For Miss Letty was the wisest and tenderest of counsellors, and out of the store of her life’s experience she was able to bring many consolations and suggestions of peace.
But the storm which had been so mysteriously gathering over Violet’s life was ready to break more suddenly and heavily than either of her kind guardians knew,—and scarcely a week had elapsed since her talk with her uncle Desmond, when the fashionable worlds of London, Paris and New York were electrified by what was set forth late one evening in bold headlines on all the newspaper placards as “Great Society Scandal.” Major Desmond heard the news first at his club, and promptly clapping on his hat, took a hansom, and urging its driver to his utmost speed, dashed through the streets to Miss Letty’s house in Hans Place, whither she had recently returned to set things in order after her vacating tenants.