“Do you mean, Aunt Nannie, that Frank Shirley’s to be excluded from society because of his father’s misfortune?”
“Not excluded, Sylvia. There are shades to such things. The point is that a young girl—a girl conspicuous, like you——”
“But, Aunt Nannie, I asked mother and father, and they were willing to receive him. Isn’t that true, Mother?”
“Why, yes, Sylvia,” said “Miss Margaret,” weakly, “but I didn’t mean——”
“It was all right for him to come here, once or twice,” interrupted Aunt Nannie. “But at a Club ball——”
“The point is, Sylvia dear,” quavered Mrs. Tuis, “you will get yourself a reputation for singularity.”
And the mother added, “You surely don’t have to do that to attract attention!”
So there it was. All that fine sentiment about the unhappy Shirleys went like a film of mist before a single breath of the world’s opinion! They would not say it brutally—“He’s a convict’s son, and you can’t afford to know him too well.” It was not the Southern fashion—at least among the older generation—to be outspoken in worldliness. They had generous ideals, and made their boast of “chivalry;” but here, when it came to a test, they were all in accord with Aunt Nannie, who was said to “talk like a cold-blooded Northern woman.”
Sylvia decided at once that some one must be told; so she went back to lunch with her aunt, and afterwards sought out the Bishop in his study. The walls of this room were lined with ancient theological treatises and sermons in faded greenish-black bindings: an array which never failed to appal the soul of Sylvia, who realized that she had consigned to the scrap-heap all this mass of learning—and had not yet apologized for her temerity.
“Uncle Basil,” she began, “I have something very, very important to tell you.” The Bishop turned from his desk and gazed at her. “I am engaged to be married,” she said.