Book III.—Results.
Chapter One.
After a life in which each day was spent in happy anticipation of the pleasures of the next, the calm, quiet existence at The Towers would have been dull and cheerless to Violet. But following so soon upon the death of Waldron, under such awful circumstances, the life with Lady Lechester seemed to her, for a while at least, like that in a haven of refuge where the storm without could not reach. And had Aymer been there, or near at hand, she would in a quiet way have been happy.
For Lady Lechester was singularly kind. She made no show of sympathy, she did not ask, as some pretentiously hospitable people do every morning, if she were comfortable and had all she wished. But Agnes possessed a rare and delicate tact, the power of perceiving what others felt, of anticipating their smallest fancies.
She accommodated herself and her habits to Violet, and there grew up between them a firm friendship, and more than that—a companionship. Agnes kept no secret from Violet. Violet had none to hide from her.
There was one topic only which Violet never of her own volition approached, but she was perfectly aware that something of the kind was going on. In an indefinable manner she had learnt that Agnes had a suitor. It came to her knowledge that he was extremely wealthy, but low born in comparison with her long descent. How Agnes looked upon him it was hard to say. She was fully five-and-thirty, and that is an age at which women begin to feel that now, if ever, is the time when they must choose a companion.
On the other hand it is an age when the glamour of early hope and youthful fancy, are hardly likely to gild the first figure that approaches with a beauty not really its own. It is an age when the mind can choose calmly and deliberately, in the true sense of the word. Violet had never seen this man, or heard his name, but she knew that there was correspondence between them, for she had seen the letters with a foreign postmark. She gathered that he was in America. After which Agnes whispered that he would shortly be home, and would visit her.
“He is very handsome,” she said, for the first time speaking directly upon the subject. “He is a man who could not be passed in a crowd, even were it not for exceptional circumstances surrounding him. And yet. I do not know—I do not know.”
Then she was silent again for several days, but presently approached the inevitable topic again.