“Yes,” Maria replied, looking at her with wonder.
“It is my vanity room,” said Miss Blair, and she laughed as if she were laughing at herself. Then she added, with a little pathos, “You yourself, if you had been in my place, would have wanted one little corner in which you could be perfect.”
“Yes, I should,” said Maria. As she spoke she settled herself down lower in her chair.
“Yes, you do look entirely too tall and straight in here,” said Miss Blair, and laughed again, with genuine glee. “Beauty is only a matter of comparison, you know,” said she. “If one is ugly and misshapen, all she has to do is to surround herself with things ugly and misshapen, and she gets the effect of perfect harmony, which is the highest beauty in the world. Here I am in harmony after I have been out of tune. It is a comfort. But, after all, being out of tune is not the worst thing in the world. It might be worse. I would not make the world over to suit me, but myself to suit the world, if I could. After all, the world is right and I am wrong, but in here I seem to be right. Now, child, tell me about yourself.”
Maria told her. She left nothing untold. She told her about her father and mother, her step-mother, and Evelyn, and her marriage, and how she had planned to go to Edgham, get the little sum which her father had deposited in the savings-bank for her, and then vanish.
“How?” asked Miss Blair.
Maria confessed that she did not know.
“Of course your mere disappearance is not going to right things, you know,” said Miss Blair. “That matrimonial tangle can only be straightened by your death, or the appearance of it. I do not suppose you meditate the stereotyped hat on the bank, and that sort of thing.”
“I don't know exactly what to do,” said Maria.
“You are quite right in avoiding a divorce,” said Miss Blair, “especially when your own sister is concerned. People would never believe the whole truth, but only part of it. The young man would be ruined, too. The only way is to have your death-notice appear in the paper.”