“Well, will you tell me,” he demanded, “the practical use of a glass in one eye? It can’t assist the sight, for Nugent always reads without it. What’s it for, then? To look at the scenery? That won’t do, for the man always clicks it out of his eye whenever he glances at the landscape! There is only one reason for his wearing it—and that is to conceal his true expression!”
“Now look here, Desmond,” said one of his club friends—“You really are going too far. How the deuce can an eyeglass conceal expression?”
“I’ll tell you how”—and the Major proceeded to demonstrate. “Suppose you succeed in training one eye to look straight while you told a crammer, and you can’t train the other? Suppose that other eye insists on shifting about and blinking as the lie pops out of your mouth? Why then, clap the eyeglass on, and there you are!”
And though he was laughed at for this theory, he, to put it in his own way, “stuck to his guns.”
And the middle of October saw Miss Letty back in England. October is often a very beautiful month in these “Happy Isles,” and Miss Letty was not sorry to see the old country once again. Her house in Hans Place was still occupied by her tenants, whose lease did not expire till the coming Christmas; so she took a suite of rooms in one of the many luxuriously appointed hotels which nowadays make London such a habitable resort, and fixed this as her headquarters, while, in compliance with Major Desmond’s ideas, she took Violet for various visits to some of the grand old country seats in England. For both she and Major Desmond had many friends among the best of the county folks who had beautiful homes, and loved those homes with a love which unfortunately is being relegated to the list of old-fashioned virtues, and Violet had plenty of chances to see for herself how English lives were lived, and what English young men were like. But the girl was not attracted by any of the jeunesse dorée of her native country. Compared with the courtesy and attention she had received from the sterner sex in America, who are accustomed to treat women with the greatest honour and reverence, she found the English young man brusque, conceited, and often coarse in manner and conversation. And her love for the polished and deferential Max Nugent grew stronger and deeper, and all the graceful fancies, hopes and dreams of her young life clustered around him as the one inevitable centre of her existence. And the “eyeglass,” to which her uncle attached such grave importance, never troubled her thoughts at all, except to move her to a smile when she thought of “uncle’s fancy” regarding it. And Miss Letty watched her as a mother would have watched her, and noted all the little signs of this deep first love absorbing her life, with a tenderness and interest which were, however, not without a vague touch of foreboding.
Soon after their return to England, there came an excitement for Miss Letty herself, in the shape of a letter from Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir. Miss Letty had written to announce her return, but had scarcely expected any reply, though she had ventured to express the hope that “dear Boy” was quite well. Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir now wrote as follows, dating from a suburb of London:—
“My dear Letitia,
Your letter was quite a surprise to me, as I thought you had gone to America for good. I had a funny idea that you would perhaps get married there after all, for one hears of so many elderly women marrying nowadays, that there really seems a chance for everybody. Boy is at his military college preparing for Sandhurst, but as he will be up in London for an exam. next week I have told him to go and see you. I thought he had quite forgotten you, but he appears to remember you fairly well. Of course he was barely ten when you saw him last, and he is now sixteen, almost a young man as you will find. He is very tall, and I think good-looking, though that may be only a mother’s fondness. Jim has been very ill lately;—a touch of what the doctors call hemiplegia, brought on of course by his own recklessness. I have to nurse him, and so you must excuse me if I do not make a formal call upon you. I have had to make many sacrifices in order to keep Boy at college, but a mother never grudges what she does for her son. Hoping you will be pleased to see Boy, and that you are as well as a woman of your age can expect to be,
Believe me, yours very sincerely,
Amelia D’Arcy-Muir.
P.S.—Boy will call and see you on Wednesday afternoon next, unless you write to say that the day is inconvenient.”