which is really of importance, and which, not speaking in figures, holds the power of life and death. Personality sometimes achieves this, circumstances always aid it; but in all cases the result is the same and sways the world it exists in—during its existence. Emily Fox-Seton had fallen deeply and touchingly in love with this particular prosaic, well-behaved nobleman, and her whole feminine being was absorbed in her adoration of him. Her tender fancy described him by adjectives such as no other human being would have assented to. She felt that he had condescended to her with a generosity which justified worship. This was not true, but it was true for her. As a consequence of this she thought out and purchased her wardrobe with a solemnity of purpose such as might well have been part of a religious ceremonial. When she consulted fashion plates and Lady Maria, or when she ordered a gown at her ladyship’s dressmaker’s, she had always before her mind, not herself, but the Marchioness of Walderhurst—a Marchioness of Walderhurst whom the Marquis would approve of and be pleased with. She did not expect from him what Sir Bruce Norman gave to Lady Agatha.
Agatha and her lover were of a different world. She saw them occasionally, not often, because the simple selfishness of young love so absorbed them that they could scarcely realise the existence of other persons than themselves. They were to be married, and to depart for fairyland as soon as possible. Both were fond of travel, and when they took ship together their intention was to girdle the world at leisure, if they felt so inclined. They could do anything they chose, and were so blissfully sufficient for each other that there was no reason why they should not follow their every errant fancy.
The lines which had been increasing in Lady Claraway’s face had disappeared, and left her blooming with the beauty her daughters had reproduced. This delightful marriage had smoothed away every difficulty. Sir Bruce was the “most charming fellow in England.” That fact acted as a charm in itself, it seemed. It was not necessary to go into details as to the mollifying of tradespeople and rearranging of the entire aspect of life at Curzon Street. When Agatha and Emily Fox-Seton met in town for the first time—it was in the drawing room at South Audley Street—they clasped each other’s hands with an exchange of entirely new looks.
“You look so—so well, Miss Fox-Seton,” said Agatha, with actual tenderness.
If she had not been afraid of seeming a little rudely effusive she would have said “handsome” instead of “well,” for Emily was sweetly blooming.
“Happiness is becoming to you,” she added. “May I say how glad I am?”
“Thank you, thank you!” Emily answered. “Everything in the world seems changed, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, everything.”
They stood and gazed into each other’s eyes a few seconds, and then loosed hands with a little laugh and sat down to talk.
It was, in fact, Lady Agatha who talked most, because Emily Fox-Seton led her on and aided her to delicate expansion by her delight in all that in these days made up her existence of pure bliss. It was as if an old-time fairy story were being enacted before Emily’s eyes. Agatha without doubt had grown lovelier, she thought; she seemed even fairer, more willowy, the forget-me-not eyes were of a happier blue, as forget-me-nots growing by clear water-sides are bluer than those grown in a mere garden. She appeared, perhaps, even a little taller, and her small head had, if such a thing were possible, a prettier flowerlike poise. This, at least, Emily thought, and found her own happiness added to by her belief in her fancy. She felt that nothing was to be wondered at when she heard Agatha speak of Sir Bruce. She could not utter his name or refer to any act of his without a sound in her voice which had its parallel in the light floating haze of blush on her cheeks. In her intercourse with the world in general she would have been able to preserve her customary sweet composure, but Emily Fox-Seton was not the world. She represented a something which was so primitively of the emotions that one’s heart spoke and listened to her. Agatha was conscious that Miss Fox-Seton had seen at Mallowe—she could never quite understand how it had seemed so naturally to happen—a phase of her feelings which no one else had seen before. Bruce had seen it since, but only Bruce. There had actually been a sort of confidence between them—a confidence which had been like intimacy, though neither of them had been effusive.
“Mamma is so happy,” the girl said. “It is quite wonderful. And Alix and Hilda and Millicent and Eve—oh! it makes such a difference to them. I shall be able,” with a blush which expressed a world of relieved affection, “to give them so much pleasure. Any girl who marries happily and—and well—can alter everything for her sisters, if she remembers. You see, I shall have reason to remember. I know things from experience. And Bruce is so kind, and gay, and proud of their prettiness. Just imagine their excitement at all being bridesmaids! Bruce says we shall be like a garden of spring flowers. I am so glad,” her eyes suddenly quite heavenly in their joyful relief, “that he is young!”
The next second the heavenly relieved look died away. The exclamation had been involuntary. It had sprung from her memory of the days when she had dutifully accepted, as her portion, the possibility of being smiled upon by Walderhurst, who was two years older than her father, and her swift realisation of this fact troubled her. It was indelicate to have referred to the mental image even ever so vaguely.
But Emily Fox-Seton was glad too that Sir Bruce was young, that they were all young, and that happiness had come before they had had time to tire of waiting for it. She was so happy herself that she questioned nothing.
“Yes. It is nice,” she answered, and glowed with honest sympathy. “You will want to do the same things. It is so agreeable when people who are married like to do the same things. Perhaps you will want to go out a great deal and to travel, and you could not enjoy it if Sir Bruce did not.”
She was not reflecting in the least upon domestic circles whose male heads are capable of making themselves extremely nasty under stress of invitations it bores them to accept, and the inclination of wives and daughters to desire acceptance. She was not contemplating with any premonitory regrets a future in which, when Walderhurst did not wish to go out to dinner or disdained a ball, she should stay at home. Far from it. She simply rejoiced with Lady Agatha, who was twenty-two marrying twenty-eight.
“You are not like me,” she explained further. “I have had to work so hard and contrive so closely that everything will be a pleasure to me. Just to know that I never need starve to death or go into the workhouse is such a relief that—”
“Oh!” exclaimed Lady Agatha, quickly and involuntarily laying a hand on hers, startled by the fact that she spoke as if referring to a wholly matter-of-fact possibility.
Emily smiled, realising her feeling.
“Perhaps I ought not to have said that. I forgot. But such things are possible when one is too old to work and has nothing to depend on. You could scarcely understand. When one is very poor one is frightened, because occasionally one cannot help thinking of it.”
“But now—now! Oh! how different!” exclaimed Agatha, with heartfelt earnestness.
“Yes. Now I need never be afraid. It makes me so grateful to—Lord Walderhurst.”
Her neck grew pink as she said it, just as Lady Maria had seen it grow pink on previous occasions. Moderate as the words were, they expressed ardour.
Lord Walderhurst came in half an hour later and found her standing smiling by the window.
“You look particularly well, Emily. It’s that white frock, I suppose. You ought to wear a good deal of white,” he said.
“I will,” Emily answered. He observed that she
