than he ever has done with the idea of pleasing the general
public and securing patronage. They were so much in love, anyhow, and
made such an interesting pair, that one's old romantic feelings were
gratified by seeing them together. They were to wait until she was
twenty-one, when a crumb of money in trust for her would fall due. Then
Amabel surprises us all by marrying De Breze. Violet of course lives
with them, and with them goes to Paris. And in Paris she becomes Madame
Pfaffenheim. _Tout bonnement!_"

"Oh, the wretch, the bad-hearted minx!"

"No," said Leslie, reflectively. She turned from the warmth of the fire
and let her eyes rest on the gray sky seen in wide patches through the
three great windows, arched at the top and blocked at the bottom by
wrought-iron guards, that admitted into the red and green room such very
floods of light--"no," Leslie repeated. "One is the sort of person one
is. The sin is to pretend. I don't believe Violet knew the sort of
person she was until it came to the test. She thought, very likely, that
she was all composed of poetry and fine sentiments and eternal love. She
wasn't; and there it is. When she had the chance actually to choose, she
preferred money, a fine establishment, luxury, and she took them. How
ghastly if, with that nature concealed in her behind the pearl and pale
roses, she had married poor Gerald! It's much better as it is, don't you
agree with me? I call him fortunate beyond words."

"Well, of course; that's one way of looking at it."

"It's his way. Gerald knows just how fortunate he has been, and it's
exactly that which makes him so miserable. At first, you understand, he
could lay the entire blame on the De Brezes; he was sure they had in
some mysterious way constrained her, and though he was angrily,
tragically, suicidally wretched, it was one kind of woe--a clean,
classic woe, I will call it. He believed it shared by her in the secret
of her uncongenial conjugal life. '_Ich grolle nicht_,' he could
say, and all that. But a year or two ago she came to Florence with
Pfaffenheim on a visit to her sister. I don't know how Gerald felt,
whether he tried to avoid her or tried to see her. That he saw her,
however, is certain. She is perfectly happy, my dears, in her marriage!
And that she should love Pfaffenheim, or be proud of him, is
inconceivable. So her happiness rests entirely upon the fact of her
riches and worldly consequence."

"Say what you please, I call