Lady Millicent

“ Had Lady Millicent been only{92} tolerably sympathetic—had she entered the least into their feelings—been but a few degrees less hard, less self-engrossed, and less unwilling to allow her children a few of the pleasures to which young flesh believes itself to be heir—it is more than probable that Horace would have been less anxious to escape from an existence which after all contained, as in later years he was ready to acknowledge, so many of the elements of happiness. ”

“ As might naturally be expected, the eyes of the{13} world and eke the monster’s tongue had from her earliest womanhood a good deal to look and say on the subject of the Lady Millicent’s future disposition in marriage. That she would—like the Maiden Queen of mighty memory, or the banker’s heiress of nineteenth-century renown—be content to enjoy her power alone, no one appeared for a single moment to imagine. There exist, always have existed, and probably always will exist, a large proportion of the bolder sex of whom it is averred, and safely too, that they are not “marrying men;” ”

“ I do think I had the honour of touching His Gracious Majesty’s little finger, I really do!”
“Really do, by all means, if it makes you happier; I’ve no objection. Jenny, I shall eat up all your cake. It is fit to be set before the Queen. Millicent, I wonder you can find in your heart to wash your hands.”
“Oh, but I had washed them, madam, before I knew,” answered Millicent regretfully.
“Well, I hope you had,” answered Lady Fisher, “seeing there lay nine years betwixt. Heigh ho! time runs away, and we with it. ”

“ But for six years she had thought herself into the rôle of a boy, even pecked her mother on the cheek like a boy, and, in their worst moments, reassured Millicent with bluff crisp phrases instead of the usual feminine endearments; to the end she had scorned sentiment and demonstrations, and, to the amazement and disapproval of Mrs. Melrose, had not shed a tear at the sad little funeral on the desert. “Boys do cry, you know,” the kind but exasperated lady had observed, while indulging freely in tears for the friend of her youth. “If you will play a part why not be consistent about it?” ”

“ It doesn’t follow, though, that we are justified in trying to set them on one side. In my opinion—but then I have never been tried,” he added, laughing, “by a similar aggravation—in my opinion, the will of a dead man, like his last injunctions, ought to be held sacred. A curse is more likely than a blessing to follow on its being set aside.”
“And they do say that Lady Millicent is going to try the case—against her own son, too! It looks unnatural; but I still say, although I am anything but fond of her, that there is some good in Lady Mill. She is fond of her children, after a fashion ”

“ Sir John Meredith gave himself a little jerk—a throw back of the shoulders which was habitual—which might have been a tribute either to Millicent behind, or to Lady Cantourne in front.
The pleasantest part of existence in a large country house full of visitors is the facility with which one may avoid those among the guests for whom one has no sympathy. Millicent managed very well to avoid Sir John Meredith. The baron was her slave—at least he said so—and she easily kept him at her beck and call during the first evening. ”

“ Anybody could let off a rifle.”
“I am afraid I could not,” replied Millicent, with a pretty little shudder of horror, “if anything growled.”
“Mr. Oscard has just been telling me,” interposed Lady Cantourne conversationally, “that he is thinking of going off to the wilds again.”
“Then it is very disappointing of him,” said Millicent, with a little droop of the eyelids which went home. “It seems to be only the uninteresting people who stay at home and live humdrum lives of enormous duration.” ”

“ ‘Fear no more,’ said Clarissa. Fear no more the heat o’ the sun; for the shock of Lady Bruton asking Richard to lunch without her made the moment in which she had stood shiver, as a plant on the riverbed feels the shock of a passing oar and shivers: so she rocked: so she shivered.
Millicent Bruton, whose lunch parties were said to be extraordinarily amusing, had not asked her. No vulgar jealousy could separate her from Richard. But she feared time itself, and read on Lady Bruton’s face, as if it had been a dial cut in impassive stone, the dwindling of life; ”

“ No longer a half-yielding, shrinking maiden, but a woman, full of tears, before whom some great sorrow, long stifled, had risen up again. Was her nature then two-fold? While she was with other people, Millicent seemed a strong, self-reliant woman, pure and cold, with quick intellectual sympathies, and strong opinions and convictions. When in the society of the man she loved, his influence unfolded the closed petals of her heart as the sun kisses back the white leaves of the daisy, and uncovers its great golden centre to the eyes of all men. ”

“ As winter gripped the town Mills was uneasy in the thought that he wasn’t getting enough out of life. Even with eight million dollars and the tastes of a cultivated gentleman, life was paying inadequate dividends. And there across the hedge lived Millicent. He would marry Millicent; but there were matters to be arranged first....
Millicent was the most beautiful young woman he knew, and she had brains and talents that added enormously to her desirability. Against this was the fact that the Hardens had risen out of nowhere, and Millicent’s possession of a father and mother could not be ignored. ”

“ Millicent hums the refrain to herself, and answers pleasantly to the noisy greeting with which one of the party hails them. A young girl, with the red-gold hair of her people, turns and looks long into Millicent's face. She wears over her broad shoulders a leopard-skin for warmth; while her head, with its glorious crown of hair, has no other protection than the doubtful one of a garland of roses. As she looks at Millicent, she takes the fragrant wreath from her brow, and, with a graceful salutation, tosses it into the gondola. ”

“ The two women made a strange, contrast as they faced one another, Millicent with her youth, beauty and happiness, the other scowling, partly at the sudden sunlight, partly at the surprise of finding a stranger there.
"I beg your pardon," said Millie smiling. "Do you want any one?"
"Do I want any one?" said the other, in a voice half-snarl, half-irony; "that's good! In one's own house too!"
"Oh, I beg your pardon!" cried Millie again blushing. "I didn't know. I've only been here an hour. I'm Miss Platt's new secretary." ”

“ The Queen offered a peerage to Lady Peel after her husband's death, but she declined the honor, acting in accordance with what she knew had been his wishes. The Duke of Wellington, in the tribute he paid to Peel in the House of Lords, spoke with tears streaming down his face; the chief part of his panegyric on his friend and leader was based on his unswerving love of truth. It was this quality, together with his political sagacity, caution, and courage, that had endeared him to the Queen. No Prime Minister has ever had a more remarkable history. ”

“ Ever and anon the deep blue eyes of Millicent were lifted to the outer gloom, as if she took note [31] of its sinister aspect. She showed scant interest in the stranger, whose gaze seldom left her as he sat beside the fire. He was a handsome man, his face and figure illumined by the firelight, and it might have been that he felt a certain pique, an unaccustomed slight, in that his presence was so indifferent an element in the estimation of any young and comely specimen of the feminine sex. ”

“ Her cheerful society will do Millicent good. I wish, my dear, that I could see more of you,” and Mrs. Porter impulsively kissed her. “But you sleep all day and work all night, and I sleep all night.” She rose abruptly. “I must go back to Millicent; the child is grieving her heart out.” She made a hesitating step toward the door leading into Vera’s bedroom. “Did you mention in your testimony at the inquest this afternoon that you saw Millicent down in the library when you went to telephone to the coroner?” ”

“ Constance murmured in a tone that implied a lack of enthusiasm for grass and sunrises.
“Millicent has a poetic nature,” Mills remarked, finding himself self-conscious at the mention of Millicent. Millicent’s belief in a Supreme Power that controls the circling planets and guides the destinies of man was interesting because Millicent held it and talked of it charmingly.
[229] “Did you see that outlandish hat Mrs. Charlie Felton was sporting?” Leila demanded with cheerful irrelevance. “I’ll say it’s some hat! She ought to hire a blind woman to buy her clothes.” ”

“ Beneath it glinted a flower-embroidered dress of rarest stuff, fluttering a multitude of ribbons; under a petticoat of heavy brocade, miniature golden feet peeped out, or slippers of peach-colored velvet. The lady of Lima was famed for her wit, entrancing the visitor as she sipped her Paraguay tea from a silver-mounted gourd.
Little is left of former splendor. The statues, the five rows of orange trees, the sweet smells are gone. At the end of the long Alameda, bordered with wind-blown trees and wrecks of marble benches, is a fountain under palms and Norfolk Island pines. ”

“ I tell you, child, that we have been mistaken, and that it is time for this thing to end."
"No, no, Graham; you are angry, you know not what you say. In mercy speak no more." She had sunk upon her knees, her clasped hands stretched toward him in an agony of fear.
"Do not kneel to me, but listen; for I am right. If things had been different, it might have been; but as they are, we have been mad to think of it. There is no help for it, my girl; we must kiss and part. You never loved me as you should, Millicent, because you could not. A woman can love but once, and that is the first time." ”

“ Graham's heart leaped from its quiet beating into a very tumult of pulsations, as the bolt was gradually drawn and the heavy door swung slowly open. On the threshold of his lonely tower stood Millicent, with downcast eyes and pale face. For a moment he was silent, looking at her, doubting his own vision; fearing to move lest she should vanish from before his eager eyes as she did in his dreams. Could this beautiful, colorless creature, with marble cheeks and fallen lids, with sombre garments and nerveless, pallid hands crossed upon the breast, be Millicent Almsford? ”

“ Millie went across to him and kissed him on the forehead.
"Of course I don't think you an ass. But you are easily taken in by people—you always believe what they say."
Henry nodded his head. "Perhaps I don't so much as I mean to. But it's the best thing to try to. You get far more that way."
The three sat there in silence. At last Millicent said:
"Isn't it queer? Here's the world on the very edge of every sort of adventure, and here are we on the very edge too? I feel in my bones that we shall go through great things this year—all of us. ”

“ After a pause, "Millicent, I think we have made a mistake, you and I. We cannot help each other, and therefore we hinder one another. You dazzle me with your beauty, and send me back to my work unfitted for it; while I only make you unhappy, and fear I can never do anything else."
"Graham, you kill me." She looked indeed as if a blow had been planted in her breast, as she reeled, all white and trembling, to a seat. ”

“ More than one lover had sued for her hand, earnestly and tenderly, but she had listened to no suit. No man had ever pursued her with fleet steps and sparkling eyes, no man had ever brought that expression of half-shamed happiness to her face which had made Millicent look just now like a child racing with her own shadow.
In the forest Graham found her standing breathless beneath an oak-tree, whose branches had caught her gown and forced her to stay her flight. ”

“ Having married a younger son of a great house, with no portion but debts on his part and beauty on hers, Millicent's aunt, with the matchless tact of our countrywomen, had secured herself a prominent and agreeable position in London society. In mere worldly advantages the young girl could have had no better chaperone than the pretty young woman, still occupied with bets, beaux, and bon-bons. ”

“ Campbell, Lady-in-Waiting to Princess Charlotte "opposes everything she sees and hears, and meets everything that men can say or do with such persistent contradiction that we can tell beforehand what will be her answers to our questions. ”

“ What was more natural than that a girl should achieve miracles when she was at once so handsome and so clever? Millicent thought with compassion of the young persons whom a niggardly fate had endowed with only one of these advantages. She was good-natured, but she had no idea of gratifying Miss Pynsent’s curiosity: it seemed to her quite a sufficient kindness to stimulate it.
She told the dressmaker she had a high position at a great haberdasher’s in the neighbourhood of Buckingham Palace ”

“ Then the peddler, with restless intelligence in his ageless eyes, himself a traveler from the same land of strange peoples, tongues, and gods, tramping indomitably along the deep Sussex lanes till he arrived as though by chance at the door of one who apparently knew him not, yet regarded his advent with fear and astonishment. And, last of all, Jean Millicent, the shadow of tragedy clouding her bright youth, a creature made for love and tenderness and care but weighted with brooding apprehensions, toward whom his own spirit had begun to move, striving, seeking, and hoping. ”

“ You know who I mean, of course?"
"She knows," said Pinkie.
"I s'posed you would. And so Millicent come on the same train with her. Seems too curious of Millicent coming on the same train with her, when Millicent hasn't been on a train but twice in her life before, and then to think that she would come back with that girl. Things do fall out queer in this world. She sit right in the seat behind her, too. That was awful curious, I think."
Mrs. Ray gave the ends of her shawl a fresh tuck, and drew in some extra breath. ”