“Well, I suppose so. She plays things without any tune that bore one to death, but I daresay you would admire it. She composes too, I am told.”
“Really? Dear me, I must make a point of having a talk with her, on the earliest opportunity.”
Meanwhile, the occupants of the pony-cart had arrived at Darachanarvan, where they were to put up the pony and have luncheon. It was a prosaic little Scottish town, with only a beautiful survival, here and there, from the past.
After luncheon, they wandered down to the banks of the river, and watched the trout and the running water. Hadria had long been wishing to find out what her oracle thought about certain burning questions on which the sisters held such strong, and such unpopular sentiments, but just because the feeling was so keen, it was difficult to broach the subject.
An opportunity came when Miss Du Prel spoke of her past. Hadria was able to read between the lines. When a mere girl, Miss Du Prel had been thrown on the world—brilliant, handsome, impulsive, generous—to pass through a fiery ordeal, and to emerge with aspirations as high as ever, but with her radiant hopes burnt out. But she did not dwell on this side of the picture; she emphasized rather, the possibility of holding on through storm and stress to the truth that is born in one; to belief in “the noblest and wildest hopes (if you like to call them so) that ever thrilled generous hearts.”
But she gave no encouragement to certain of her companion’s most vehement sentiments. She seemed to yearn for exactly that side of life from which the younger shrank with so much horror. She saw it under an entirely different aspect. Hadria felt thrown back on herself, lonely once more.
“You have seen Mrs. Gordon,” she said at length, “what do you think of her?”
“Nothing; she does not inspire thought.”
“Yet once she was a person, not a thing.”
“If a woman can’t keep her head above water in Mrs. Gordon’s position, she must be a feeble sort of person.”