Claudia tried to stop her with a significant gesture, but in vain.
Ideala was obtuse.
"Claudia came out this evening in the most extraordinary covering I ever saw a lady wear," she said to the Bishop's wife. "I really think she must have borrowed it from one of the maids."
"I am afraid you must mean the blue shawl I lent to Lady Claudia the other evening," the Bishop's wife replied, with a hurt smile.
"Oh!" said Ideala, disconcerted for a moment. "But, really, Bishopess, you deserve to be upbraided. You should set a better example, and not provoke us to scorn on the subject of your shawls."
Later, when I was alone with my sister, I said: "Ideala did nothing but put her foot in it this evening. What was the matter with her? I never heard her speak so strongly before, except when she was alone with us. And I don't think she ought to discuss such subjects with such people; it is hardly delicate."
Claudia sighed wearily. "Who knows what pain is at the bottom of it all?" she said. "But one thing always puzzles me. Ideala rails at evils that never hurt her, and yet she speaks of marriage, which has been her bane, as if it were a holy and perfect state, upon which it is a privilege to enter."
"Plenty of people have condemned marriage simply because their own experience of it has been unfortunate," I answered; "but Ideala is above that. She will let no petty personal mishap prejudice her judgment on the subject. She sees and feels the possibility of infinite happiness in marriage when there is such love and such devotion on both sides as she herself could have brought to it; and she understands that her own unhappy experience need only be exceptional."
"I wish it were!" sighed Claudia.
Some years later, Ideala confessed to me that she had written "The Passion of Delysle" herself, but had had no idea of its significance until she heard it read aloud that night, and then, as she elegantly expressed it, she could have cut her throat with shame and mortification, which I consider a warning to young ladies not to trust to their poetical inspirations, for—if the shade of Shelley will pardon the conclusion—alas! apparently, they know not what they do when they write verses!
"I can't think how you could have criticised it like that, Ideala," I said, "now that I know you wrote it."