style="font-size:15px;"> "In a way, it is. I mean that you can't go beyond that. But – "
Again he paused, feeling a sudden shyness, even with his own daughter, in speaking of anything that concerned him so intimately.
"But though you can't go beyond love," he said, "you can go into it – penetrate, penetrate, as you said just now, yourself. And the more you penetrate into it the more you will see that there is no end to it, and no beginning either. And then you will call it by another name."
He paused for a moment, and got up as he heard himself somewhat shrilly summoned from within the house.
"It seems to you all rather dull, I am afraid, my dear," he said, "but it isn't."
Elizabeth rose also.
"But why would it be nonsense for you to speak of it as I did?" she asked. "And why is it excellent sense for me to do so?"
"Because when you are forty-eight, my dear, you will have had to learn a certain sort of patience and indulgence, which is quite out of place when you are eighteen. You will have seen that the people who bake bread and milk cows and review troops, as I do, may conceivably be doing – well, doing quite nicely. But you are quite right to think them useless old fogies at present!"
Elizabeth gave him a quick little kiss.
"You are a darling!" she said. "And now I am going to vanish swiftly round the corner of the veranda. Mamma has called you three times and you haven't answered. You will get into trouble, and so I desert you."
Elizabeth's amiable scheme was executed a little too late. She had barely got half-way down the veranda when her stepmother rustled out of the drawing-room, already dressed for her party. Her light, slight figure was still like a girl's – like a girl's, too, was her evening dress, with its simple, straight cut. Nor did her face – smooth, delicate, and soft – belie the impression; but her forehead and the outer corners of her eyes were a little lined, as if a sleepless night had momentarily devitalized her youth. And her voice, when she spoke, was old – old and querulous.
"Bob, I have been calling and calling you!" she said. "And are you not dressed yet? What have you been doing? Elizabeth, why did you not send your father to dress? We shall be late, as usual, and if husband and wife are late every one always thinks it is the wife's fault. Do go and dress, my dear; and Elizabeth, my darling, will you come and talk to me while I wait for him? I am so dreadfully tired! I am sure I do not know how I shall get through the evening. What a pity you are not a year older, and then you could go instead of me and let me pass a quiet evening at home! Or why are not you and I going to have a dear little evening alone together?"
Elizabeth retraced her steps.
"I am quite willing to go instead of you, mamma!" she said.
"Dearest, I know how unselfish you are. But you must keep your sweet girlish freshness another year, and not tire yourself with sitting up and dancing all night. I know you think I ought to have let you go to-night, but you must allow me to judge of that. Indeed, my dear, I feel sure you do."
This little speech was admirably characteristic of Mrs. Fanshawe. At one moment she would be finding fault with everybody, at the next she would shower tenderness on them. It mattered nothing to her that only a few hours ago she and Elizabeth had exchanged peculiarly clear-cut and opposed views on the subject of this dance; she was quite capable, a few hours later, of assuming that they were quite in accord about it. She never had the smallest qualms on the subject of her own sincerity, as is the habit of thoroughly insincere people. She was merely quite determined to get her own way over any point in which she had a preference, and, having got it, always proceeded to make herself charming in a rather helpless and clinging kind of manner. Whether her husband had ever gone so far as to admit even to himself the fact of her insincerity is doubtful. Where his affection was engaged he lost all power of criticism; where he loved he swallowed whole.
Mrs. Fanshawe gave a delicate little sigh – a very perfect and appealing little sigh. It might have been supposed, so finished was it, so perfectly phrased, that she had practised it for years in private. Such was not the case; it was quite natural to her artificial self, and came to her lips as spontaneously as song to a thrush.
"We must see a great deal of each other these next days, Elizabeth," she said, "before you go off to all the gaiety and delights of England. How I long to come with you, for I am sure the hot weather will utterly knock me up; but of course my duty is with your father. I should not dream of leaving him while I went home to enjoy myself."
"But you will go up to the hills next month, mamma, will you not?" said the girl. "And stop there till the autumn? And you will like that, won't you?"
Mrs. Fanshawe gave the famous little sigh again.
"Like it? My dear, it is the emptiest, emptiest life," she said; "nothing but gossip and parties all day and dancing in the evening. I would far sooner stop down here with your father, and only go away with him when he can get off. But of course he would not hear of that, for he knows very well that to spend the summer here would kill me. I should not dream of distressing him by suggesting it."
Occasionally Elizabeth's patience gave way before the accumulation of such insincerities. In general she put up with them unrebelliously, adapting herself to the experience of daily life. But now and then she rose in flagrant and unsuspected mutiny. She did so on this occasion, as her father appeared again dressed for this evening's functions.
"Daddy," she said, "mamma has been telling me how much she would like to stop here with you instead of going up to the hills. Wouldn't that be nice for you? It sounds a charming plan, mamma."
Mrs. Fanshawe did not suffer a moment's discomposure. She took Elizabeth's chin daintily in her fingers and gave her a little butterfly kiss, which could not disarrange anybody's complexion.
"Darling, what an idea!" she said. "What can I have been saying to make you think I meant that! Good-night, my little sweet one. Go to bed early, and I shall come to my room like a mouse, so as not to disturb you. And, in turn, dear, would you mind not beginning to practise till, shall we say, eleven to-morrow morning. Begin then and wake me up with some delicious thing like what you were playing so very early this morning. Good-night, sweet Cinderella!"
Elizabeth's rebellion vanished in a sense of amusement. She knew that she might as well expect to cause a blush of embarrassment on the face of the serene moon, by repeating to a mere mortal some unconsidered remark of hers, as to cause her stepmother a moment's loss of self-composure, and she smiled at the butterfly lips. Even when Mrs. Fanshawe caused her the greatest irritation she could not banish altogether the instinct of protection and tenderness towards that remarkably well-equipped little lady. She was really about as capable of taking care of herself as an iron-clad battleship anchored in a calm sea, with guns agape and torpedo-nets spread, but she conveyed so subtle an impression of dependence and timidity that even the victims of her most trying insincerities relented towards her as towards a pretty child eager for enjoyment. It was so easy to strike the smile off her face.
"Good-night, little mamma!" said Elizabeth. "Have a nice time and dance every dance. And I shan't disturb you to-morrow by my practising, as I am going with daddy up the Khyber."
"My darling, won't that be rather a long day for you? I hoped, perhaps, we should spend to-morrow quietly together, you and I."
"Oh no, not a bit long!" said Elizabeth, again with a little spark of irritation. "I shan't have spent all night dancing like you. Good-night, dear daddy! I shall be ready to start at eight."
Elizabeth made a renewed but absent-minded attack on her tea when the others had gone, countermanded
