“Iris may marry,” suggested Mrs. Irving, trying to smile.
“Iris,” repeated Aunt Peace, “no indeed! I have made her an old-fashioned spinster like myself. She has never thought of such things, and never will!”
(At the moment, Miss Temple was reading an anonymous letter, much worn, but, though walls have ears, they are happily blind, and Aunt Peace did not realise that she was nowhere near the mark.)
“Marriage is a negative relation,” continued Miss Field, with an air of knowledge. “People undertake it from an unpardonable individual curiosity. They see it all around them, and yet they rush in, blindly trusting that their own venture will turn out differently from every other. Someone once said that it was like a crowded church—those outside were endeavouring to get in, and those inside were making violent efforts to get out. Personally, I have had the better part of it. I have my home, my independence, and I have brought up a child. Moreover, I have not been annoyed with a husband.”
“Suppose one falls in love,” said Margaret, timidly.
“Love!” exclaimed Aunt Peace. “Stuff and nonsense!” She rose majestically, and went out with her head high and the step of a grenadier.
Left to herself, Margaret mentally reviewed their conversation, passing resolutely over the hurt that Aunt Peace had unconsciously made in her heart. Never before had it occurred to her that Lynn might marry. “He can’t,” she whispered; “why, he’s nothing but a child.”
She turned her thoughts to Iris and Aunt Peace. The homeless little savage had grown into a charming woman, under the patient care of the only mother she had ever known. If Aunt Peace should die—and if Lynn should marry,—she did not phrase the thought, but she was very conscious of its existence,—she and Iris might make a little home for themselves in the old house. Two men, even the best of friends, can never make a home, but two women, on speaking terms, may do so.
“If Lynn should marry!” Insistently, the torment of it returned. If he should fall in love, who was she to put a barrier in his path? His mother, whose heart had been hungry all these years, should she keep him back by so much as a word? Then, all at once, she knew that it was her own warped life which demanded it by way of compensation.