After much consideration, which ended in leaving her as wise as she was before, it suddenly dawned upon Miss Trebasson that her friend either had been born without a soul or that it had never developed.
From that hour Miss Trebasson treated Dolly with the same sort of tenderness as she might an eminently interesting and attractive infant; and when it was proved to demonstration that Mortomley had fallen in love with the girl, Miss Trebasson, after the first bitterness was over, felt no surprise at his choice.
Beside Dolly, spite of her beauty, her intellect, her ancestors, her titled relations, Leonora Trebasson knew she must look but as a bird of very dull plumage.
Weather, means, the state of the domestic atmosphere, the depression of the home funds, never made any difference to Dolly. Given that you expected her, and she was quite certain to appear crisp, smiling, happy, bright, with nothing to say perhaps particularly worth recording, and yet able to say that nothing in a way which made the time speed by quickly and pleasantly.
Miss Trebasson had no more thought of Dolly as a rival than she might have taken of a kitten or a puppy; and yet when Mortomley lost his heart, being a woman rarely wise and with somewhat of a man's instincts, she understood he had done so for the same reason in great measure as she loved Dolly herself, because the creature was gay, sun-shiny, brimful of life and spirits,—because, in a word, she was Dolly Gerace.
Miss Trebasson had seen Dolly in the dumps,—she had seen Dolly rueful—Dolly in sorrow—Dolly crying fit to break her heart—Dolly living with a father who, though loving, never interfered with her—Dolly living with an aunt who never ceased to interfere; and yet, through all these changes, Dolly left the impression that in the country where she lived a fine climate was the rule, not the exception.
When Mortomley fell in love with Dolly, Miss Trebasson waited curiously, and—she was only human and a woman—anxiously, to see if her friend would at length develope any of those qualities which are supposed, more or less erroneously, to attach to a person destined to exist throughout eternity as well as time, but she watched in vain.
Dolly went through her engagement and her marriage with her customary sun-shiny cheerfulness.
"She has no soul," decided Miss Trebasson, "she does not care for him one bit;" and the tears Miss Trebasson shed that night were very bitter, for she herself had cared for Archibald Mortomley very much, and she doubted greatly whether Dolly Gerace was the wife he ought to have chosen. However, he had chosen her, and there was an end of the matter.
Mr. Trebasson gave her away; Miss Trebasson, Miss Halling, and a couple more young ladies were bridesmaids. Mortomley had been sorely exercised to find a best man, but at length he hit on Henry Werner.