E. F. Benson

“ The suppositious Jim did not seem to mind the villainous weather. He sat some time over coffee after lunch, and Violet found herself thinking that men ought to take themselves off as soon as lunch was over, and smoke or sleep, or do whatever men did on rainy afternoons. But Lord Barwell appeared to think that men ought to make themselves agreeable in some way on such occasions, and waited for orders. ”

“ Finally, by the time this reached her it would be near the end of October, and May would see him back in England.
His letters grew more and more distasteful to her. What did she care about Colombo and the tea-plantations? What, above all, did she care——
Lady Waynfleete came rustling in.
“Ah, there you are, dear,” she said, “I was just going to ask you—why, what’s the matter, Violet?”
Violet was tearing the letter she had just received into little bits. Her forehead was gathered into an unmistakable frown, but the corners of her mouth “looked sorry.” ”

“ What shall we do? It’s not three yet, and there are five and a half hours to dinner. What shall we do? Let’s amuse ourselves somehow. Let’s have charades. You shall be the beast, Lord Barwell, and I’ll be beauty. Or the other way round if you like. Probably you want to smoke.”
“That’s being the beast,” remarked Lord Barwell. “What does beauty do with herself meanwhile?”
“Oh, beauty usually smokes too, I notice,” said Violet, “so I sha’n’t do for beauty, because I never smoke. I think it’s beastly—you understand—to smoke.”
Lord Waynfleete put down the Times. ”

“ You’ve got to improve your mind, you’ve got to see the leaning tower of Pisa, and the Sistine Madonna, and the Acropolis, and the Malay Peninsula. That will be very good for you. You will be a sort of Waring; every one will ask to-morrow or the next day what has happened to you, and I shall say that you’ve travelled East away.”
“And some one will find me in Trieste harbour,” said Jim.
“It’s very easy to be Waring nowadays,” said Violet, meditatively. “You’ve only got to do nothing in England for a few years except look rather distinguished, and then buy a ticket to Benares from Cook.” ”

“ I often think that our moral decisions are just as complicated as our mental decisions, whereas they ought to be so simple. Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and if you love a man you love him, and if you don’t of course you couldn’t possibly marry him. ”

“ It never produces no effect. In Violet’s case, it so happened that her mother’s wholly sincere wishes drove her to just the opposite conclusions, but exactly why they had this effect rather than the other is a subtlety of too intimate a nature to discuss lightly. One can only give Lady Waynfleete’s advice as it was given.
“I often think of your future, darling,” she said one day, when Lord Barwell loomed more imminently than usual, “and I wonder, oh, I wonder what it will be. ”

“ Of course your own heart will guide you, absolutely and entirely, but it is only right that you should be told what you cannot know of yourself. Ah, dear me, yes!”
c|Illustration: WHEN A HANSOM STOPPED AT THE HOUSE.}}
Lady Waynfleete paused a moment, and looked out on to the yellow London fog, which was just beginning to drift a little. Lord Waynfleete had come up to London early in February, and his wife and daughter had come with him. Lord Barwell was also in town, having suddenly discovered, apparently, that his duties as a legislator in the Upper House demanded his presence. ”