The Happiest Time of Their Lives | Page 5

person. In her hat and veil, lit by the friendly
light of her own drawing-room, she seemed so young as to be actually
girlish, except that she was too stately and finished for such a word.
Mathilde did not inherit her blondness from her mother. Mrs. Farron's
hair was a dark brown, with a shade of red in it where it curved behind
her ears. She had the white skin that often goes with such hair, and a
high, delicate color in her cheeks. Her eyebrows were fine and
excessively dark--penciled, many people thought.
"Mama, this is Mr. Wayne," said Mathilde. Here was another
tremendous moment crowding upon her--the introduction of her
beautiful mother to this new friend, but even more, the introduction to
her mother of this wonderful new friend, whose flavor of romance and
interest no one, she supposed, could miss. Yet Mrs. Farron seemed to
be taking it all very calmly, greeting him, taking his chair as being a
trifle more comfortable than the others, trying to cover the doubt in her
own mind whether she ought to recognize him as an old acquaintance.
Was he new or one of the ones she had seen a dozen times before?
There was nothing exactly artificial in Mrs. Farron's manner, but, like a
great singer who has learned perfect enunciation even in the most
trivial sentences of every-day matters, she, as a great beauty, had
learned the perfection of self-presentation, which probably did not
wholly desert her even in the dentist's chair.
She drew off her long, pale, spotless gloves.
"No tea, my dear," she said. "I've just had it," she added to Wayne,
"with an old aunt of mine. Aunt Alberta," she threw over her shoulder

to Mathilde. "I am very unfortunate, Mr. Wayne; this town is full of my
relations, tucked away in forgotten oases, and I'm their only connection
with the vulgar, modern world. My aunt's favorite excitement is
disapproving of me. She was particularly trying to-day." Mrs. Farron
seemed to debate whether or not it would be tiresome to go thoroughly
into the problem of Aunt Alberta, and to decide that it would; for she
said, with an abrupt change, "Were you at this party last night that
Mathilde enjoyed so much?"
"Yes," said Wayne. "Why weren't you?"
"I wasn't asked. It isn't the fashion to ask mothers and daughters to the
same parties any more. We dance so much better than they do." She
leaned over, and rang the little enamel bell that dangled at the arm of
her daughter's sofa. "You can't imagine, Mr. Wayne, how much better I
dance than Mathilde."
"I hope it needn't be left to the imagination."
"Oh, I'm not sure. That was the subject of Aunt Alberta's talk this
afternoon--my still dancing. She says she put on caps at thirty-five."
Mrs. Farron ran her eyebrows whimsically together and looked up at
her daughter's visitor.
Mathilde was immensely grateful to her mother for taking so much
trouble to be charming; only now she rather spoiled it by interrupting
Wayne in the midst of a sentence, as if she had never been as much
interested as she had seemed. Pringle had appeared in answer to her
ring, and she asked him sharply:
"Is Mr. Farron in?"
"Mr. Farron's in his room, Madam."
At this she appeared to give her attention wholly back to Wayne, but
Mathilde knew that she was really busy composing an escape. She
seemed to settle back, to encourage her visitor to talk indefinitely; but
when the moment came for her to answer, she rose to her feet in the

midst of her sentence, and, still talking, wandered to the door and
disappeared.
As the door shut firmly behind her Wayne said, as if there had been no
interruption:
"It was love you were speaking of, you know."
"But don't you think my mother is marvelous?" she asked, not content
to take up even the absorbing topic until this other matter had received
due attention.
"I should say so! But one isn't, of course, overwhelmed to find that
your mother is beautiful."
"And she's so good!" Mathilde went on. "She's always thinking of
things to do for me and my grandfather and Mr. Farron and all these
old, old relations. She went away just now only because she knows that
as soon as Mr. Farron comes in he asks for her. She's perfect to every
one."
He came and sat down beside her again.
"It's going to be much easier for her daughter," he said: "you have to be
perfect only to one person. Now, what was it you were going to say
about love?"
Again they looked at each other; again Miss Severance had the
sensation of drowning, of being submerged in some strange elixir.
She was rescued