Mrs. Flint missed the girl more than she could have deemed possible. She had secret spasms of remorse over the rigid life she had led the poor girl, all on account of having had a poor opinion of her mother.
“I was trying to bring her up right, so she might not follow in her mother’s footsteps; but maybe I was too hard on her,” she mused, “and if I had her back here, I’d try to act a little different to the poor girl. Still, I can’t think that anything I did to her was half as bad as Everard’s refusing to let her marry Arthur Varian. To the day of my death that’ll be a mystery to me why he refused such a good chance for Cinthy. A poor girl like her ain’t never going to get such another offer. And they do say that since the Varians came back to Idlewild, that Arthur looks like a ghost. Mrs. Bowles says they have a house-party for Christmas, with lots of awful pretty girls, but that he don’t care for any of them, though his proud mother’s trying her hardest to marry him off to one of them. Well, well, maybe his luck and Cinthy’s may turn, and they’ll marry yet. I do hope so, for I love to see a girl marry her first love.”
There was one thing about her hand-maid that did not altogether please the pious Mrs. Flint.
She discovered that Rachel Dane was wholly irreligious.
She neither attended church, read the Bible, nor said her prayers at night—three facts that quite shocked her employer.
In kindly remonstrating with the woman, the widow found out that she cherished a grievance.
Her quarrel with fate was poverty.
“I will not worship a Being who makes such a difference between His creatures, blessing some with riches and happiness, and cursing others with poverty and woe,” she said, rebelliously.
And all Mrs. Flint’s pious arguments made no change in her mood. She only answered, flatly:
“I beg that you will not waste arguments on me, ma’am. I’ve heard all that before, and it don’t alter my opinion at all.”