“Not a patch on Imogen, if I may call her so,” Miss Forsyth continued. “But the marvel,” and here she dropped her voice discreetly, “is Major Winchester! A man who never knows if a woman has a nose on her face or not—who stalks about the world like the great Mogul. Of course, we all admire him and respect him—oh, immensely!—but we look upon him as a being quite apart. And there he is—perfectly devoted—taking the greatest interest in these theatricals, which as a rule he would have thought beneath contempt, and all, I am sure, for your daughter’s sake. Trixie and I can’t get over it.”
Mrs Wentworth’s smile was positively beaming.
“My dear Miss Forsyth, you are too kind, too partial,” she said. “I quite appreciate all you say, but—I must not have Imogen spoilt. She is so young. Major Winchester, for instance—I am sure he considers her a perfect child.”
“But she is not—not in some ways,” Mabella went on, insidiously. “She has been so well brought up,”—and here she sighed deeply—“so well educated. I heard Rex saying to some one that he could see she had excellent abilities. It will be such a good thing for my poor Trixie if a girl like that takes to her—her influence would be everything. Much better than mine,” here she sighed again. “I can do my friends no good, I can only love them. I was not well brought up—far from it, as I daresay you can see for yourself.”
“Poor dear!” said Mrs Wentworth, too ingenuous herself to doubt another, and too candid to express any civil disagreement. She gently stroked Mabella’s hand, while the ready tears rose to her eyes. “You had no mother, perhaps?”
“Yes, my mother is still living, but—she never understood me,” said Miss Forsyth, vaguely. And Mrs Wentworth, suspecting some painful family history behind the words, forbore to question further. She would have been not a little amazed had she heard the true side of the story. A father and mother, simple-minded and devoted to their daughter, erring only in their too great unselfishness, to be repaid by contempt and scorn, when, by dint of a certain unscrupulous cleverness, Mabella made her way into a higher social sphere. She and Trixie had met accidentally, and the elder girl at once laid herself out to obtain an ascendency over the spoilt Helmont “baby,” in which she succeeded only too well.
“No,” Mabella repeated. “I was never understood, and—I was not naturally patient and docile, I fear; and now, though I see it all, I am too old to change, I suppose.”
“Too old!” repeated Imogen’s mother. “Nonsense, dear Miss Forsyth. You can’t be more than seven or eight and twenty?”
“I am three-and-twenty,” said the girl, which was true. She was furious, but she hid it. “Will you take me in hand, dear Mrs Wentworth,” she went on, “if you don’t think me too old! You can’t be many years older yourself,” she added, sweetly.
“I shall be thirty-eight next month,” Imogen’s mother replied. “That is dreadfully old, is it not?”