MRS. ARNOLD CONFIDES IN HUBERT TRACY.
Mrs. Arnold's beauty was commented upon by the fashionable throng with whom she daily mingled. She was sought after and courted by her many admirers; yet among them all there was none who thought her the most charming of her set.
The wily beauty had adopted a line of policy that was not the most discreet. She showed a spiteful spirit towards any of her sex who laid claim to personal charms, and often said many bitter things in a way that was neither dignified nor ladylike.
It was in such a spirit that Mrs. Arnold returned from a grand ball where she had seen Lord Melrose pay marked attention to the pretty Mrs. Maitland. With anger in her bosom she strode the elegant boudoir with measured beat and vowed vengeance upon her more fortunate rival.
"Why does any one envy me the charms I possess?
"Ah, me!" she cried, looking at herself in the mirror with her hands poised in the attitude of a Caryatid. "It is all I have. Happiness I shall never know; but one thing I do know—that I will laugh, dance and sing and have a merry life while I am young, and then when my charms have fled to a younger form I will bury myself in some remote convent and try to make atonement for my gay and worldly life."
It were strange, indeed, that Mrs. Arnold had this sense of wrong. She did, indeed, realize that her actions were not what any sensible woman would justify, yet she took refuge in the thought that when she grew old there was time enough for discretion.
Another trait of her disposition: It grieved her to see others happy. Like the arch fiend who turned aside with envy when he beheld the happy pair in the Garden of Eden and from that hour plotted their ruin, so Mrs. Arnold from, sheer envy was determined that the innocent and pure-minded Marguerite should be associated with the coarse side of humanity—in short, that she should become familiar with the fashionable miseries of a fashionable woman.
But Mrs. Arnold reckoned without her host. She met with more opposition than she expected, and the lesson she yet had to learn cost her a bitter experience!
Mrs. Verne's vascillating nature was a source of much annoyance to her first-born.