* * * * * *
Time never seemed to Madame Claire to pass slowly, but it had never passed less slowly than now. Stephen de Lisle’s letters undoubtedly added a spice of excitement and anticipation to her days. She seldom went out (for she disliked fog, and London seemed just then to have gone to bed with a thick yellow blanket pulled over it) and she only asked those people to come to see her who, she said, touched her at the most points. She hated polite boredoms, and unless her visitors pleased or amused her, she preferred to be left to her own thoughts.
Of late her mind had run much upon her youngest daughter Connie, the beauty of the family—Connie who had “thrown her bonnet over the mill,” as the saying was in those days, and run off with Petrovitch, who was at that time first capturing London and Paris with his marvelous playing.
The blow had nearly broken her father, but Madame Claire was made of sterner stuff, and had long observed tendencies in her lovely daughter which promised to lead to this very dénouement. Connie Gregory had one of those entirely beautiful faces which seem so at variance with the tragedies they evoke. She had the prettiest and weakest mouth, and the most irresistible blue eyes that ever gave delight to a painter of pretty women. And she was “done” by all the fashionable artists of the day in every imaginable style of dress and posture. She had a very small share of wit, but with women like Connie, a little wit goes a long way. Her lovely head was forever turning to look down dark paths, and no one but her mother ever observed those sidelong glances. When she was twenty-two, she married a perfectly suitable young man, and Madame Claire hoped that the then serious duties of wifehood and motherhood would fill her shallow little head to the exclusion of dark romancing. But they had been married less than a year when Petrovitch with his leonine head and his matchless playing became the rage of London, and Connie, in company with a good many other women of her type, threw her youth and beauty, like a bouquet of flowers, at his feet. He was able to resist much, but the sheer loveliness of Connie made such an onslaught upon his bored indifference—wherein was mingled the most astonishing conceit—that when his contracts in London expired, he returned to Paris with the emotional and hysterical young wife clinging to his arm.
It was just at the outbreak of the Boer War, and Leonard Humphries, her husband, very naturally seized the opportunity of getting himself honorably shot. When that event took place, as it did some months later, people thought that Connie would at least legalize her irregular attachment by marriage, but Petrovitch produced a sturdy German wife, and scotched all such hopes. So London saw the lovely Connie no more.
Madame Claire bore her trouble with all the philosophy at her disposal. She never tried to avoid the subject, and was quite as willing to talk about Connie as about Eric or Millicent, in the wise belief that wounds exposed to the air now and then have the best chance of healing. For years after she sent letters and often money to Connie through her banker, for she knew well enough where a lack of funds might lead those uncertain steps. For a while her letters were answered, but it was not long before the answers ceased to come. She had heard nothing from Connie for many years now, and she no longer expected to hear. She thought of her as a foolish and unhappy woman, whose punishment would be, here or hereafter, self-inflicted, and understanding human nature as she did, she refrained from bitterness.
As for Eric, he was of the opinion that the world suffers less on the whole from women who love not wisely but too well, than from women who love too little. Weighed in the perhaps faulty scales of a man’s judgment, therefore, Connie was a better woman than Louise. Connie gave all and got nothing, while Louise took all without a thank you, and gave nothing. But men are always more inclined to forgive the generous sins than the ungenerous.
[CHAPTER V]
“Old Stephen’s” letter in answer to Madame Claire’s second one, contained a great deal that was of interest to her.