"You are mistaken again, as usual. The person who told me this is a sober-minded woman of middle age, who could not have been influenced by jealousy."
"Mrs. Marsh, I suppose. I might have known it, from her choice vocabulary. Talk of gossips, Aunt Agnes, I never heard a worse one in any drawing-room in the city. Who is Mrs. Marsh?"
I was glowing with indignation again, and justly so as it seemed to me. I had been cruelly misconstrued, and my self-control on the occasion of Miss Kingsley's tea had been wholly unappreciated.
"Who is Mrs. Marsh? You may well ask who is Mrs. Marsh, after what you have said about her. Gossip or no gossip, vocabulary or no vocabulary, Mrs. Marsh is a very deserving woman, who by her own unaided efforts has risen to the position she now occupies. How often shall I be obliged to impress upon you that it is the spirit, not the letter, that is of importance? As secretary of the Society for the Practice of Moderation, Mrs. Marsh can afford to disregard the ill-natured sneers of those who may have enjoyed greater advantages in early life than she. It is not by wholesale abuse of others, Virginia, that you will persuade me of your innocence. On your own showing, you have written to Mr. Spence, and misconstrued Mr. Barr's poetic impetuosity as an attempt to flirt with you. I do not desire to discuss the matter further. We shall soon know whether you are sincere or not in your professions of study. As I have told you before, your future is in your own hands; but first and foremost you must rid yourself of this propensity to behave in a trivial manner."
I felt that silence would be the best palliative for my wounds; and so discouraged was I of being able to change Aunt Agnes's opinion, I thought it a waste of breath at the moment even to mention Mrs. Marsh as my authority for the statement that Miss Kingsley had a tender feeling for Mr. Spence.
V.
A year passed without special incident, and yet certain things require to be told so that the sequel may seem consistent. Contrary to Aunt Agnes's insinuation, I proved sincere in my devotion to study. Mr. Fleisch came regularly twice a week, and during the summer months when I was away from home his instruction was continued by means of correspondence. I found him, as Mr. Spence had predicted, an admirable teacher. His work was everything to him, and he imbued me with his ability to look at our relations as strictly impersonal. He might have been a machine, so little was he susceptible to any mood of mine,—a characteristic which I deemed more and more indispensable each day to a proper understanding between pupil and master.
As a result of his teaching and my own industry, I acquired before many months an intimate knowledge of the views shared by those who called themselves Moderationists, and moreover without the slightest diminution of my enthusiasm. I was able to converse intelligently with the most proficient of the school, and there was little of the system that failed to commend itself to me as entitled to faith and support. I attended meetings and lectures in advocacy of its theories, and occasionally took part in debates on questions relating to the management of the Society for the Practice of Moderation, of which I was elected treasurer. Thus it happened that my name appeared in the newspapers as one of the leading spirits of the movement, and among my former acquaintances there was a general impression that I had become very peculiar. My old ball-room rivals, who were for the most part waltzing as hard as ever, would stop me in the street and say, "Virginia dear, is it true you are going into a convent?" or, "What is this that I hear, Virginia, about you being in favor of female suffrage? Do you really think women ought to vote?" Once in a while some friend, who was either more accurate by nature or who really felt an interest in me, would hit closer to the mark, and perhaps with a sigh express regret at not having the courage to become literary too. "But it does separate one so from other people,—that is, people one knows; don't you think so dear?"
It certainly did. I was completely estranged from my old associations, and spent my time, when not employed in study, largely at the rooms of our Society, where Mrs. Marsh presided as secretary. There were countless circulars and pamphlets to be mailed, setting forth our purposes and needs. Mrs. Marsh, despite an inaccurate acquaintance with and an overweening curiosity regarding the doings of fashionable people, was a model of executive ability. With some one at hand to correct her grammar and spelling, she could transact a greater amount of business than half-a-dozen ordinary women. In my zeal to see things properly done, I constituted myself her assistant; and we managed together the whole work of the Bureau, as Miss Kingsley liked to call our humble quarters.