orn of all its attraction and romance in the smaller, more
conventional, and meaner egotisms of Lady Blanche.

And yet, in her own way, she was full of heart. She lost her head over a
love affair. She could deny Aileen nothing. That was what her casual
Indian acquaintances meant by calling her "sweet." When Warkworth's
attentions, pushed with an ardor which would have driven any prudent
mother to an instant departure from India, had made a timid and charming
child of eighteen the talk of Simla, Lady Blanche, excited and
dishevelled--was it her personal untidiness which accounted for the
other epithet of "quaint," which had floated to the Duchess's ear, and
been by her reported to Julie?--refused to break her daughter's heart.
Warkworth, indeed, had begun long before by flattering the mother's
vanity and sense of possession, and she now threw herself hotly into his
cause as against Aileen's odious trustees.

They, of course, always believed the worst of everybody. As for her, all
she wanted for the child was a good husband. Was it not better, in a
world of fortune-hunters, that Aileen, with her half-million, should
marry early? Of money, she had, one would think, enough. It was only the
greed of certain persons which could possibly desire more. Birth? The
young man was honorably born, good-looking, well mannered. What did you
want more? _She_ accepted a democratic age; and the obstacles thrown by
Aileen's guardians in the way of an immediate engagement between the
young people appeared to her, so she declared, either vulgar or
ridiculous.

Well, poor lady, she had suffered for her whims. First of all, her
levity had perceived, with surprise and terror, the hold that passion
was taking on the delicate and sensitive nature of Aileen. This young
girl, so innocent and spotless in thought, so virginally sweet in
manner, so guileless in action, developed a power of loving, an
absorption of the whole being in the beloved, such as our modern world
but rarely sees.

She lived, she breathed for Warkworth. Her health, always frail,
suffered from their separation. She became a thin and frail vision--a
"gossamer girl" indeed. The ordinary life of travel and society lost all
hold upon her; she passed through it in a mood of weariness and distaste
that was in itself a danger to vital force. The mother became
desperately alarmed, and made a number of flurried concessions. Letters,
at any rate, should be allowed, in spite of the guar