Annette looked from the excited figure on the sofa to the dignified personage in the arm-chair, and her heart was wrung for them both. Oh! Poor dears! poor dears! Living in this shadowy world of their own in which reality never set foot, this tiny world of which Aunt Harriet spoke so glibly, which Aunt Maria described with such touching confidence. Was she going to shatter it for them?—she whom they were doing their best to guide into it, to make like themselves.
"I am rather tired," she said, folding up her work. "I think I will go to bed, and then you can read the chapter together, and decide whether I can hear it later on."
"It is very carefully treated, very lightly, I may say skilfully touched," said Aunt Maria urbanely, whose previous remark had been entirely conventional, and who had no intention of losing half her audience. "I think, on the whole, I will risk it. Sit down again, Annette. Let me see, how old are you?"
"Twenty-three."
"Many women at that age are wives and mothers. I agree with you, Harriet. The danger we elders fall into is the want of realization that the younger generation are grown up. We must not make this mistake with you, Annette, or treat you as a child any longer, but as—ahem!—one of ourselves. It is better that you should be made aware of the existence of the seamy side of life, so that later on, if you come in contact with it, your mind may be prepared. Chapter one hundred and twenty-five. The False Position."
CHAPTER XXXIX
"All other joy of life he strove to warm,
And magnify, and catch them to his lip: