which seemed at last to be within her grasp, was not like the love and happiness that might have been. When Beaufort was not with her, her pale countenance, that thoughtful face with its air of distinction, and sensitive delicacy, which had never been beautiful, would fall into a wan shadow and fixedness which were wonderful to see. When he was with her, it lighted up with gleams of ineffable feeling, yet would waver and change like a stormy sky, sometimes with a lightning-flash of impatience, sometimes with a wistful questioning glance, which gave it to Lady Lindores all the interest of a poem united to the far deeper, trembling interest of observation with which a mother watches her child on the brink of new possibilities. Were they for good or evil?—was it a life of hope fulfilled, or of ever increasing and deepening disappointment, which lay before Carry’s tremulous feet? They were not the assured feet of a believing and confident bride. What is love without faith and confidence and trust? It is the strangest, the saddest, the most terrible, the most divine of human passions. It is seldom that a woman begins with such enlightenment in her eyes. Usually it is the growth of slow and much-resisted experience, the growing revelation of years. How sweet, how heavenly, how delightful, when love is blind! How wise the ancients were to make him a child—a thing of caprice and sweet confusion, taking everything for granted! But this to Carry was impossible. When her mother took her into her arms on her wedding morning, dressed in the soft grey gown which was the substitute for bridal white, they kissed each other with a certain solemnity. At such a moment so much is divined between kindred hearts which words can never say. “I want you to remember,” said Carry, “mother dear—that whatever comes of it, this is what is best.” “I hope all that is most happy will come of it, my darling,” said Lady Lindores. “And I too—and I too—” She paused, raising a little her slender throat, her face, that was like a wistful pale sky, clear-shining after the rain—“But let it be what it may, it is the only good—the only way for me.” These were the sole words explanatory that passed between them. Lady Lindores parted with the bridal pair afterwards with an anxious heart. She went home that night, travelling far in the dark through the unseen country, feeling the unknown all about her. Life had not been perfect to her any more than to others. She had known many disappointments, and seen through many illusions: but she had preserved through all the sweetness of a heart that can be deceived, that can forget today’s griefs and hope again in tomorrow as if today had never been. As she drew near her home, her heart lightened without any reason at all. Her husband was not a perfect mate for her—her son had failed to her hopes. But she did not dwell on these disenchantments. After all, how dear they were! after all, there was tomorrow to come, which perhaps, most likely, would yet be the perfect day.
The cover page is adapted from The Misses Vickers,
a painting completed in by John Singer Sargent.
The cover and title pages feature the League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in and by The League of Moveable Type.
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