tes, so far as I was aware, was she the
maid forlorn. I think her self-respect was of too robust a character,
thanks to the Misses Farnham. Still less, of course, had she any
reproaches to serve upon her mother, although for a long time I thought
I detected--or was it my guilty conscience?--a spark of shrewdness in
the glance she bent upon me when the talk was of Mr. Tottenham and
the probabilities of his return to Agra. So well did she sustain her
experience, or so little did she feel it, that I believe the impression
went abroad that Dacres had been sent disconsolate away. One astonishing
conversation I had with her some six months later, which turned upon
the point of a particularly desirable offer. She told me something then,
without any sort of embarrassment, but quite lucidly and directly, that
edified me much to hear. She said that while she was quite sure that Mr.
Tottenham thought of her only as a friend--she had never had the least
reason for any other impression--he had done her a service for which she
could not thank him enough--in showing her what a husband might be. He
had given her a standard; it might be high, but it was unalterable.
She didn't know whether she could describe it, but Mr. Tottenham was
different from the kind of man you seemed to meet in India. He had his
own ways of looking at things, and he talked so well. He had given her
an ideal, and she intended to profit by it. To know that men like Mr.
Tottenham existed, and to marry any other kind would be an act of folly
which she did not intend to commit. No, Major the Hon. Hugh Taverel did
not come near it--very far short, indeed! He had talked to her during
the whole of dinner the night before about jackal-hunting with a bobbery
pack--not at all an elevated mind. Yes, he might be a very good
fellow, but as a companion for life she was sure he would not be at all
suitable. She would wait.

And she has waited. I never thought she would, but she has. From time
to time men have wished to take her from us, but the standard has been
inexorable, and none of them have reached it. When Dacres married the
charming American whom he caught like a butterfly upon her Eastern tour,
Cecily sent them as a wedding present an alabaster model of the Taj, and
I let her do it--the gift was so exquisitely appropriate. I suppose
he never looks at it without being reminded that he didn't marry Miss
Farnham, and I hope that he remembers that he owes it to Miss Farnham'