Part 6 (2/2)

Oh, marvel! gazing still at her, The potion turned to sweetness as I drank.”

If your old friend, Donald Maitland, were dead to you, your new lover, Rudolph Hartzmann, might fill his place. I never stopped to think if such trickery were right, or rather my love was stronger than my conscience.

Good-night, my dearest.

X

_March 1._ During my visit I heard much about you from Mrs. Blodgett and Agnes, for your name was constantly on their lips. From them I learned that your birth, wealth, and the influence of your uncle had involved you in a fas.h.i.+onable society for which you cared nothing, and that, aside from the gayety which that circle forced upon you, your time was spent in travel, and in reading, music, and charitable work. Except for themselves, they averred, you had no intimate friends, and their explanation of this fact proved to me that you had taken our separation as seriously as had I.

”After Mr. Walton brought her to America she spent the first few months with us,” Mrs. Blodgett told me, ”and was the loneliest child I ever saw. Her big eyes used to look so wistfully at times that I could hardly bear it, yet not a word did she ever speak of her sorrow. And all on account of that wretch and his son! I think the worse men are, the more a good woman loves them! When Maizie was old enough to understand, and Mr. Walton told her how she had been robbed, she wouldn't believe him till Mr. Blodgett confirmed the story. She used to be always talking of the two, but she has never spoken of them since that night.”

Even more cruel to me was something Agnes related. She wors.h.i.+ped you with the love and admiration a girl of eighteen sometimes feels for a girl of twenty-three, and in singing your praises,--to a most willing listener,--one day, she exclaimed, ”Oh, I wish I were a man, so that I could be her lover! I'd make her believe in love.” Then seeing my questioning look, Agnes continued: ”What with her selfish old uncle, and the men who want to marry her for her money, and those hateful Maitlands, she has been made to distrust all love and friends.h.i.+p. She has the idea that she isn't lovable,--that people don't like her for herself; and I really think she will never marry, just because of it.”

Better far than this knowledge of you at second-hand was Mr. Blodgett's telling me that you were to dine with them during my visit. It may seem absurd, but not the least part of my eagerness that night was to see you in evening dress. If I had not loved you already, I should have done so from that meeting; and although you are dear to me for many things besides your beauty, I understand why men love you so deeply who know nothing of your nature. That all men should not love you is my only marvel whenever I recall that first glimpse of you as you entered the Blodgetts' drawing-room.

Before we had finished our greetings Mr. Whitely entered, and though I little realized how vital a part he was to be of my life, I yet regarded him with instant interest, for something in his manner towards you suggested to me that he coveted the hand you offered him.

A lover does not view a rival kindly, but I am compelled to own that he is handsome. If I had the right to cavil, I could criticise only his mouth, which it seems to me has slyness with a certain cruel firmness; but I did not notice this until I knew him better, and perhaps it is only my imagination, born of later knowledge. I am not so blinded by my jealousy as to deny his perfect manner, for one feels the polished surface, touch the outside where one will.

Your demeanor towards him was friendly, yet with all its graciousness it seemed to me to have a quality not so much of aloofness as of limit; conveying in an indefinable way the fact that such relations as then existed between you were the only possible ones. It was a shading so imperceptible that I do not think the Blodgetts realized it, and I should have questioned if Mr. Whitely himself were conscious of it, but for one or two things he said in the course of the evening, which had to me, under the veil of a general topic, individual suggestion.

We were discussing that well-worn question of woman's education, Mrs.

Blodgett having introduced the apple of discord by a sweeping disapproval of college education for women, on the ground that it prevented their marrying.

”They get to know too much, eh?” laughed Mr. Blodgett.

”No,” cried Mrs. Blodgett, ”they get to know too little! While they ought to be out in the world studying life and men, so as to choose wisely, they're shut up in dormitories filling their brains with Greek and mathematics.”

”You would limit a woman's arithmetic to the solution of how to make one and one, one?” I asked, smiling.

”Surely, Mrs. Blodgett, you do not mean that an uncultivated woman makes the best wife?” inquired Mr. Whitely.

”I mean,” rejoined Mrs. Blodgett, ”that women who know much of books know little of men. That's why over-intellectual women always marry fools.”

”How many intellectual wives there must be!” you said.

”I shouldn't mind if they only married fools,” continued Mrs. Blodgett, ”but half the time they don't marry at all.”

”Does that prove or disprove their intellect?” you asked.

”It means,” replied Mrs. Blodgett, ”that they are so puffed up with their imaginary knowledge that they think no man good enough for them.”

”I've known one or two college boys graduate with the same large ideas,”

remarked Mr. Blodgett.

”But a man gets over it after a few years,” urged Mrs. Blodgett, ”and is none the worse off; but by the time a girl overcomes the idea, she's so old that no man worth having will look at her.”

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