A Fountain Sealed | Page 9

kindly, yet ironic, insight. Her figure was supple; her
nut-brown hair, splendidly folded at the back of her head, was hardly

touched with white; her quickly glancing, deliberately pausing, eyes
were as clear, as pensive, as a child's; with almost a child's candor of
surprise in the upturning of their lashes. A brunette duskiness in the
rose of lips and cheeks, in the black brows, in the fruit-like softness of
outline, was like a veil drawn across and dimming the fairness that
paled to a pearly white at throat and temples. Her upper lip was ever so
faintly shadowed with a brunette penciling of down, and three grains
de beauté, like tiny patches of velvet, seemed applied with a pretty
coquetry, one on her lip and two high on her cheek, where they
emphasized and lent a touch of the Japanese to her smile. Even her
physical aspect carried out the analogy of something vivid and veiled.
She was clear as day, yet melting, merged, elusive, like the night; and
in her glance, in her voice, was that mingled brightness and shadow.
When she had given them their tea she left her friends, taking her
toasted little dog, languid and yawning, under her arm, and, at a sharp
yelp from this petted individual, his paw struck by the opening of the
door, they heard her exclaiming in contrition over him, "Darling lamb!
did his wicked mother hurt him!"
Mrs. Pakenham and Mrs. Wake sipped their tea for some time in
silence, and it was Mrs. Pakenham who voiced at last the thought
uppermost for both of them, "I wonder how Sir Basil will take it."
"Everard's death, you mean, or her going off?"
"Both."
"It's obvious, I think, that if he doesn't follow her at once it will only be
because he thinks that now his chance has come he will make it surer
by waiting."
"It's rather odious of me to think about it at all, I suppose," Mrs.
Pakenham mused, "but one can't help it, having seen it all; having seen
more than either of them have, I'm quite sure, poor, lovely dears."
"No, one certainly can't help it," Mrs. Wake acquiesced. "Though I,
perhaps, should have been too prudish to own to it just now--with poor
Everard hardly in his grave. But that's the comfort of being with a frank,

unscrupulous person like you; one gets it all out and need take no
responsibility."
Mrs. Pakenham smiled over her friend's self-exposure and helped her to
greater comfort with a still more crude, "It will be perfect, you know, if
he does succeed. I suppose there's no doubt that he will."
"I don't know; I really don't know," Mrs. Wake mused.
"One knows well enough that she's tremendously fond of him,--it's just
that that she has taken her stand on so beautifully, so gracefully."
"Yes, so beautifully and so gracefully that while one does know that,
one can't know more--he least of all. He, I'm pretty sure, knows not a
scrap more,"
"But, after all, now that she's free, that is enough."
"Yes--except--".
"Really, my dear, I see no exception. He is a delightful creature, as
sound, as strong, as true; and if he isn't very clever, Valerie is far too
clever herself to mind that, far too clever not to care for how much
more than clever he is."
"Oh, it's not that she doesn't care--"
"What is it, then, you carping, skeptical creature? It's all perfect. An
uncongenial, tiresome husband--and she need have no self-reproach
about him, either--finally out of the way; a reverential adorer at hand;
youth still theirs; money; a delightful place--what more could one ask?"
"Ah," Mrs. Wake sighed a little, "I don't know. It's not, perhaps, that
one would ask more, but less. It's too pretty, too easy, too à propos; so
much so that it frightens me a little. Valerie has, you see, made a mess
of it. She has, you see, spoiled her life, in that aspect of it. To mend it
now, so completely, to start fresh at--how old is she?--at forty-six, it's
just a little glib. Somehow one doesn't get off so easily as that. One

can't start so happily at forty-six. Perhaps one is wiser not to try."
"Oh, nonsense, my dear! It's very American, that, you know, that
picking of holes in excellent material, furbishing up your consciences,
running after your motives as if you were ferrets in a rat-hole. If all you
have to say against it is that it's too perfect, too happy,--why, then I
keep to my own conviction. She'll be peacefully married and back
among us in a year."
Mrs. Wake seemed to acquiesce, yet still to have her reserves. "There's
Imogen, you know. Imogen has to be counted with."
"Counted with! Valerie, I hope,