Mrs Hulbert Brackett seemed to comprehend the situation thoroughly. She left the office without another word, and we have never heard of her since.
III. One of Dora’s Failures
Is it usual to record one’s failures? I believe not. And yet many of them are perforce as interesting to the public as one’s most brilliant successes.
Here is a case in point.
A young lady, whom we will call Ada Calmour, had had the misfortune to displease her wealthy father to so great an extent that he vowed never to forgive her. Her crime was a common one. She loved a handsome young fellow who was impulsive, unlucky, poor, and a cousin to boot, and steadfastly declined to give him up when ordered to do so by her father, from whom, by-the-by, she inherited the self-will which roused his ire.
Just about this time Mr Calmour fell under the spell of a lady whom his daughter did not hesitate to dub an adventuress of the most pronounced type, and it became evident to his friends that he was sickening for matrimony.
The ordinary judge of humanity would have imagined that Mr Calmour’s own infatuation would have made him more tolerant of his daughter’s love affair. But, to the tell the truth, he was perversity personified, and as his appreciation of Miss Reede’s insidious advances increased, so did his depreciation of his nephew’s qualities progress in inverse ratio.
At last matters reached a crisis. The adventuress’s intrigues progressed successfully, and Miss Reede succeeded in transforming her impecunious self into the wife of a wealthy country magnate. She had evidently entered upon her new sphere of life with fixed ideas as to the fitness of things, for she had no sooner returned from her short honeymoon that she began to turn the house upside down, and coolly informed her step-daughter that she must vacate the bedroom she had always occupied, as it was to be transformed into a boudoir for the new mistress of the establishment. As there were at least two other rooms in the rambling old house that would have suited Mrs Calmour’s purpose equally well, Ada recognised in the new arrangement a deliberate intention to insult her, and suspected that the ulterior motive was to drive her from the house.
A girl of meek and yielding spirit would have submitted to the indignity without audible complaint. Miss Calmour was too high-spirited for that, and declined to yield her treasured privileges without a struggle. Her father had always petted and indulged her until these unfortunate love differences arose. He had, in her opinion, shown strong signs of mental aberration in marrying a woman of whose antecedents he knew nothing beyond the fact that she owed money in all directions before she secured him for her husband, and that her very close intimacy with a man whom she represented to be her guardian provoked invidious comments.
Ada was therefore not greatly surprised when her father declined to put a veto upon Mrs Calmour’s appropriation of her pet sanctum.