“Pa and Ma!” she exclaimed—“I must not forget them! Those dear, respectable parents of mine, who only cared for me as long as I was an interesting object to themselves, and found me ‘in the way’ when their interest ceased! Flighty Pa! Wouldn’t he just love to be rejuvenated and turned out as a sort of new Faustus, amorous and reckless of everybody’s feelings—but his own! Oh, yes, I mustn’t forget Pa! I’m young enough to wear white now!—I’ll go and see him as soon as I get back to England—before Ma’s best mourning gown grows rusty!” She laughed again, the most enchanting dimples lightening her face as mirth radiated from her lips and eyes—then all at once she became serious, almost stern, and stood up as though lifted erect by some thought which impelled action. One hand clenched involuntarily.
“Captain the Honourable Reginald Cleeve!” she said, in slow tones of emphatic scorn—“Especially the Honourable! I must not forget him!—or his fat wife!—or his appallingly hideous and stupid children! I must look at them all!—and not only must I look at them—they must look at me!”
Her hand relaxed,—her eyes, limpid and lustrous, turned again towards the open window and moonlit summer night.
“Yet—is vengeance worth while?” she mused—“Vengeance on a mote—a worm—a low soul such as that of the man I once almost worshipped? Yes!—the gods know it is worth while to punish a liar and traitor! When the world becomes unclean and full of falsehood a great war is sent to purge its foulness,—when a man destroys a life’s happiness it is just that his own happiness should also be destroyed.”
She had come to the conclusion of her meditations, and seeing the hour was ten o’clock, she opened her door and put the untouched little supper-table with all its delicacies outside in the entresol to be cleared away; then locking herself in for the night, prepared to go to bed. It was now that a sudden thrill of doubt quivered through her beautiful “new” organisation,—the nervous idea that perhaps she would not be able to pray! She took herself severely to task for this thought.
“All things are of God!” she said, aloud—“Whatever science has made of me I can be nothing without His will. To Him belong the sun and air, the light and fire!—to Him also I belong, and to Him I may render thanks without fear.”
She knelt down and uttered the familiar “Our Father” in slow, soft tones of humility and devotion. To anyone who could have watched her praying thus, she would have seemed
“A splendid angel newly drest
Save wings, for heaven!”
And when she laid her head on her pillow she fell asleep as sweetly as a young child, her breathing as light, her dreamless unconsciousness as perfect.