"We can all do that," said Judith disgusted. "Put another stick in the stove, that's all it wants. And this is little Muriel's birthday. Miss Matilda? How old is she today? Twelve? Ah--Pretty child, but not very tall. But that is in the family, I suppose. Dionysius is almost short, and Betsey there is really stumpy. But I do not see much resemblance in her to Betsey."
"Neither do I."
"But one would expect to see a family-likeness."
"Between second cousins? I do not see the necessity."
"Blood always tells, you know. Yet she is not even like Dionysius----no trace of his square intellectual forehead, or anything."
"Your niece and her uncle are Bunces, perhaps, and Muriel a Stanley."
"But she is not like you either."
"I confess I never was clever about seeing likenesses, but I am sure I could not be fonder of the child if she were ever so like me. Penelope, do you not think we might have tea, now?"
Considine had heard Martha's mention of Selby. It was the first time in years that he had heard the name. It awoke recollections which had long been asleep. Jordan, his co-trustee in the Herkimer fortune had no doubt told him the family story on his return to Montreal, but at that time his mind was full of his own cares, and since then the mere periodical investment of dividends had not called for a recurrence to the subject. Though, doubtless, he remembered his old attachment, and would still have felt a kindness for its object had his thoughts wandered that way, the preoccupations of business led them in other directions; the tender passages were relegated to the same limbo as the memories of childhood, and his ante bellum possessions wiped out of existence by the event of war. Love-dreams, longings, the yearnings of what we call our "hearts," are luxuries of the well-to-do, living at their ease. When the wolf comes to the door, and the means of subsistence are in doubt or danger, Cupid, the ethereal sprite, feeding daintily on sighs and idle fancies, wings himself way; and in the turmoil of hard material facts, he is not missed. It is best so. The heart wounds, forgotten, skin over and heal, where head and arms are in danger from the blows of fortune; and so the undivided energies are free for the combat. But now, his personal affairs having arranged themselves in an easy well-to-do routine which gave no anxiety, his mind was open to other interests, and of these there were not enough to engage it. He often felt dull and lonely. He would now and then accompany Ralph to St. Euphrase, remaining over night and returning to town in the morning, thereby killing a long afternoon, as on the present occasion; but this could be only an occasional palliation. The "planting" years of his youth, as he called them, and the fighting years which followed, had not been the apprenticeship to make him take an undivided interest in business for its own sake after he had secured income sufficient for his needs. He had outlived his relish for the society of young men--young men of business, at least--the middle-aged had withdrawn into domestic life, and he found himself a good deal alone.
The mention of Selby's name stirred old associations which time and adventure had long deprived of bitterness; and now he looked back with only a plaintive yearning to the happiness which might have been, if he had had his way, and pitied himself in his solitary estate. If he had married, what wealth of love was his to have bestowed! And how he could have enjoyed being cosseted and purred to by a wife of his own, instead of depending on hirelings whose servile smile betrayed the hollowness of their attentions. The smoking-room at his club, and his own rooms at the hotel rose before his eye in their dull solid unsatisfying comfort, and he could not but compare them with the clean, unsmoky freshness and brightness of the woman's world around him, and confess the two as different and apart as the close warm stuffiness of a winter sick-room, from the clear keen day out of doors in early spring.