“That is plain at any rate,” said the young man.
“I meant it to be so,” she answered; “obscurity can serve no good purpose on either side; you have made a mistake, that is all, and it would be unkind in me not to undeceive you. Now, good-bye, and when you meet with any one you consider worthy to become Mrs. Duncan Aggland, I, as the female head of your family, shall be most happy to call upon her.” With which speech, Mrs. Stondon dismissed her admirer, and from that day forth devoted herself, so far as any mere observer could discover, heart and soul to amusement and frivolity.
People who had seen the widow during her time of mourning marvelled to behold her, when that time was over, emerging from her seclusion, accepting all invitations, appearing here and there and everywhere, seeming to care very little what was thought about her, providing only she could pass the time and make the hours fly quicker.
“What a flirt that woman is,” some one said, casually, to Basil Stondon, when speaking of his relative.
“Yes,” thought Basil, as he walked home, “what a flirt! Hang her, she never was anything but a flirt. If she had, my life might have been a different one.”
So, when men stumble over a pebble they are apt to blame the pebble instead of their own stupidity; so, when they fall into a hole they are in the habit of anathematising the hole for being there instead of their own blindness which was unable to see it; and so on precisely the same principle Basil accused Phemie of causing misfortunes which had been brought about entirely by himself.
As for the life she led—the heartless, purposeless, unsatisfying life—what can we say but this, that there are some people who when they are in trouble take to dram-drinking, while others prefer opium; and in like manner there are men and women who mentally seek the oblivion of excitement, while others court the deadening monotony of seclusion. Which is worst—providing the patient must run to either extreme—to one the wine cup, or to another the opium? They are both so injurious, you answer, that it would be impossible to make a choice, and yet for Phemie I think the intoxication of society was the least hurtful of the twain. To a temperament like hers—secure against disappointment, against love, against expectations that could never be realised—excitement was surely less fatal than inaction, the round of gaiety than the round of endurance.
The world was, as usual, critical and not over kind in its remarks upon her: some people saying she was seeking for a coronet, others that a title would content her, even if the title were no higher than that of baronet.
As to her views and wishes, if she had any, all her own relatives were at fault, even Mr. Aggland, who only once ventured to say—
“Be cautious, my dear, remember,