Neither the characters nor the incidents of this story are in any way drawn from persons or events of real life; and in passages where the names of the living or the dead have been mentioned, they thus appear merely because the omission of them seemed impossible (in such a context) by reason of the world-wide fame of their holders.
SPINSTER OF THIS
PARISH
CHAPTER I
IT had been an odd impulse that made little Mildred Parker seek counsel and advice, or at least sympathy, from Miss Verinder in the first great crisis of her young life. The imperious necessity of opening her heart to somebody had of course lain behind the impulse, and Miss Verinder, although really only an acquaintance of Mildred’s parents, had been unusually kind and friendly to Mildred herself; but now, sitting in the drawing-room of Miss Verinder’s flat, listening to Miss Verinder’s pleasant emotionless voice, watching Miss Verinder with methodic care put away small odds and ends in an antique bureau, she felt the huge incongruity that there would be in speaking of love to an old maid of fifty.
“I won’t be a minute,” said Miss Verinder.
“I am not in the least hurry,” said Mildred quite untruthfully.
Waiting and watching, she thought that fifty years of age is nothing nowadays—if you are not an old maid, and if you decorate yourself properly. Some women of fifty are still dangerously attractive—they act leading parts on the stage, they appear in divorce cases, they marry their third husbands. But when once you have allowed old maidishness to take possession of you!
“A place for everything and everything in its place,” said Miss Verinder, closing a drawer and speaking as if to herself rather than to a visitor. “That is a good motto, isn’t it?” And she began to flick a silk handkerchief. “These are souvenirs—with only a sentimental value.”