Minna Hart was an only child. She had lost her mother early in life, and had been left to the casual care of a series of governesses, with none of whom, save one, had she contracted a warmer bond than that of mutual indifference. For this exceptional one she had conceived a girlish passion; but as the young lady had disappeared one night, carrying with her some of her pupil’s most valuable jewellery, Minna’s love had been turned to hatred, which vented itself afterwards upon all succeeding governesses. As soon as it was practicable she declared her education to be finished, and herself to have done with instructors forever. Whereupon her father, who had as vague a notion of rearing a daughter as of fighting a line-of-battle ship, brought into the house, as duenna, his only sister, an elderly, stout, rubicund, black-haired Jewess of the most orthodox faith. As Minna had never been accustomed to pay regard to Judaic observances, and only went to synagogue now and then, in order to show off her new dresses, her Aunt Leah’s interfering piety maddened her past endurance. Moreover, the good lady, in the streets, with blowsy face, red roses, gold chain, and a brooch the size of a dessert-plate, was a sight for gods and men, with which Minna shrank from being associated. So when Aunt Leah died suddenly, Minna was inexpressibly relieved. She issued forthwith another domestic manifesto, in which she announced her intention of leading thenceforward a perfectly untrammelled and independent life.
Accordingly, she reigned supreme in her father’s house, obeying all her caprices, bending her servants to her will, or summarily dismissing the recalcitrant, surrounding herself with all the bodily luxuries that money can buy—and eating out her young heart in loneliness. Beyond the strong Hebrew sense of parentage, Israel Hart had little sympathy with his daughter. She despised his race and loathed his profession.
He felt it instinctively. Her company was an embarrassment. He could not talk of gowns and laces, of music, picture-galleries and light literature. The engrossing pursuit of money-making interested her not in the least. Outside relatives, whose foibles and disagreeablenesses form so harmonious a household bond, there were not. By the wives and daughters of his city co-religionist friends his daughter passed with a sniff of her delicate nose. She would have none of them. Israel shrugged his shoulders, and beyond insisting on her co-operating with him in the interchange of a few formal courtesies—ordeals worse than Sabbath observances under Aunt Leah’s dispensation—left her entirely to her own devices. In the house, they rarely met, except at dinner. Afterwards, if the humour seized her, she would play to him for half an hour in the drawing-room, and then he would go down to his study. Her comings and goings were of little concern to him. He would have given her a staff of lady companions, had she desired it; but as she refused to be interfered with, Israel, with many wonderings as to the strange and hidden ways of womankind, sagaciously refrained from interference. On one point, however, he stood firm: when the question of her marriage came up for discussion, his voice should have considerable weight. But Minna scoffed at the idea of marriage with such hooked noses and shiny crowns and puffed cheeks as ventured to come a-wooing, and sat instead at her window and sighed, poor child, for the prince that never could come. She lived an aimless, lonely life, wasting her young and splendid womanhood in a vicious circle of unsatisfied longings. The society of her own folk she would not. The alien society that she craved would not her. She was a social leper—the Jew money-lender’s daughter. Yet, on looking inward, she knew that the leprosy of her wealth was in her heart’s blood. She could not cleanse herself from it, bathe in the Jordan of renunciation, go forth into the world and work out her freedom. She had the Syrian repugnances of Naaman.
Sometimes the palatial loneliness of her home weighed too awfully upon her spirit. The torture of unsatisfied cravings set all her nerves jangling. Then she would fly from town, without her maid, and visit at Brighton her old Syrian nurse, Anna Cassaba, who gave up to her the best rooms in her house, petted and soothed her, and uttered comfortable prophecies concerning the prince. Perhaps Anna was the only creature in the world she cared for. The old woman worshipped her with an Oriental passion of devotion.
At Brighton, in the intoxication of her liberty and the vainglory of her beauty, the girl sought adventures, played recklessly with fire. She learned the languorous witchery of her voice, and it became a wild pastime to exercise it upon the chance met man. Once a young guardsman fell in with her upon the Parade, carried her off to dinner. At the end, she insisted upon paying half the bill. He demurred. She rose and declared she would walk straight out of the place if he did not accept with good grace. He yielded the point. They went to the theatre together, and then for a long moonlight drive along the roast. It was audacious bliss. She arrived home at two o’clock in the morning. Anna was sleepless with terror, in spite of a warning telegram. Minna explained lightly. The old woman lifted up her young cheeks with tremulous fingers.
“Oh, God, my child—you have come to no harm?”
Minna broke into merry laughter. Only when the prince came would there be that danger. She would know him in a moment. And she cut the young guardsman dead in the street the next day, having wiped off his kisses forever.
But at last came Hugh.
Oddly enough, she met him first in the Merriams’ drawing-room, whither she had gone with her father in anything but an adventurous spirit.
Some shrewd remark of Hugh’s had caught Israel’s fancy. With the parting handshake he ventured to express the pleasure it would give him to see Mr. Colman at The Lindens. The young man sought for a non-committal phrase of courtesy; but a glance from swimming eyes, half-proud, half-appealing, brought a quick acceptance to his lips. And that was the beginning of things.