Glasses | Page 6

will change."
"Whom will she marry?" my companion gloomily asked.
"Any one she likes. She's so abnormally pretty that she can do anything.
She'll fascinate some nabob or some prince."
"She'll fascinate him first and bore him afterwards. Moreover she's not
so pretty as you make her out; she hasn't a scrap of a figure."
"No doubt, but one doesn't in the least miss it."
"Not now," said Mrs. Meldrum, "but one will when she's older and
when everything will have to count."
"When she's older she'll count as a princess, so it won't matter."
"She has other drawbacks," my companion went on. "Those wonderful
eyes are good for nothing but to roll about like sugar-balls--which they
greatly resemble--in a child's mouth. She can't use them."
"Use them? Why, she does nothing else."
"To make fools of young men, but not to read or write, not to do any
sort of work. She never opens a book, and her maid writes her notes.
You'll say that those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Of course I know that if I didn't wear my goggles I shouldn't be good

for much."
"Do you mean that Miss Saunt ought to sport such things?" I exclaimed
with more horror than I meant to show.
"I don't prescribe for her; I don't know that they're what she requires."
"What's the matter with her eyes?" I asked after a moment.
"I don't exactly know; but I heard from her mother years ago that even
as a child they had had for a while to put her into spectacles and that
though she hated them and had been in a fury of disgust, she would
always have to be extremely careful. I'm sure I hope she is!"
I echoed the hope, but I remember well the impression this made upon
me--my immediate pang of resentment, a disgust almost equal to
Flora's own. I felt as if a great rare sapphire had split in my hand.
CHAPTER III

This conversation occurred the night before I went back to town. I
settled on the morrow to take a late train, so that I had still my morning
to spend at Folkestone, where during the greater part of it I was out
with my mother. Every one in the place was as usual out with some one
else, and even had I been free to go and take leave of her I should have
been sure that Flora Saunt would not be at home. Just where she was I
presently discovered: she was at the far end of the cliff, the point at
which it overhangs the pretty view of Sandgate and Hythe. Her back,
however, was turned to this attraction; it rested with the aid of her
elbows, thrust slightly behind her so that her scanty little shoulders
were raised toward her ears, on the high rail that inclosed the down.
Two gentlemen stood before her whose faces we couldn't see but who
even as observed from the rear were visibly absorbed in the charming
figure-piece submitted to them. I was freshly struck with the fact that
this meagre and defective little person, with the cock of her hat and the
flutter of her crape, with her eternal idleness, her eternal happiness, her

absence of moods and mysteries and the pretty presentation of her feet,
which especially now in the supported slope of her posture occupied
with their imperceptibility so much of the foreground--I was reminded
anew, I say, how our young lady dazzled by some art that the
enumeration of her merits didn't explain and that the mention of her
lapses didn't affect. Where she was amiss nothing counted, and where
she was right everything did. I say she was wanting in mystery, but that
after all was her secret. This happened to be my first chance of
introducing her to my mother, who had not much left in life but the
quiet look from under the hood of her chair at the things which, when
she should have quitted those she loved, she could still trust to make
the world good for them. I wondered an instant how much she might be
moved to trust Flora Saunt, and then while the chair stood still and she
waited I went over and asked the girl to come and speak to her. In this
way I saw that if one of Flora's attendants was the inevitable young
Hammond Synge, master of ceremonies of her regular court, always
offering the use of a telescope and accepting that of a cigar, the other
was a personage I had not yet encountered, a small pale youth in showy
knickerbockers, whose eyebrows and nose and the glued points of
whose little moustache were extraordinarily uplifted and sustained. I
remember taking him