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Rex started, and took the beaker nearest to him. 'I drink to Hilda's mother, he said in an odd voice. He looked towards Frau von Sigmundskron, but in her place there seemed to sit another woman, one so like Hilda's self that no human eye could have detected a point in which the one did not resemble the other. He raised the glass to his lips. It was empty, and his lips met only the air.
"It was never home," said Hilda, darkly. "It was never home. I lived here with you and your father, but it was never home." Jean, more than ever afraid of this woman, had a sudden sense of something tragic in the fact of Hilda's homelessness. "I don't quite see what you mean," she said, slowly. "You couldn't see," Hilda told her, "and you will never see. Women like you don't."
"That is the great question, my dear," and a cloud gathered in Mother Hilda's face, for it had come into her mind to tell Evelyn that she hardly knew anything of the religious life as yet; but remembering her promise to the Prioress, she said: "Obedience is the beginning of the religious life, and you must try to think that you are a child in school, with nothing to teach and everything to learn.
Arthur was quite right, indeed, when he said one day to Lady Hilda that its very brilliancy and fervour had the hectic glow about it, as of a man who was burning himself out too fiercely and rapidly; you could read the feverish eagerness of the writer in every line; but still, Lady Hilda answered with her ordinary calm assurance that it was all going well, and that Ernest only needed the sense of security to pull him round again; and as usual, Lady Hilda's practical sagacity was not at fault.
He didn't like anybody to be severe with Hilda, and he felt that their way of helping his courtship was not suited to the modern ideas. "They make her hate me," he often muttered. But if he resented it he would offend them and Hilda too; if he acquiesced he encouraged them and added to Hilda's exasperation. Mrs. Brauner knew at once that Hilda was in some way the cause of the break in the custom.
Hilda's hair was yellow, and yellow hair is often lustreless as the pine dust in the woods; but hers glowed, as it were by its own colour, without reflection, out of the very abundance of vitality.
We in the Hilda's gig lay handily at the starting line and soon were called out. There were nine entries for the Cup, and the judges had decided to run three heats. We were drawn in the first, and, together with the Ardlea's and Compton's gigs, went out to be inspected. The boats had to race in sea-service conditions, no lightening was allowed. At the challenge of the judges we showed our gear.
I saw her about it the same morning we got Hilda's letter; and she offers 200L. a year, which, of course, is mere pocket money, as your board and lodging are all found for you, so to speak, and you'll have nothing to do but to dress and amuse yourself. 'Well, mother, I shall see about it. I'm going to consult Herr Schurz upon the subject this morning.
My heart is not so irreverent as my words." They went through the piazza of St. Peter's and the adjacent streets, silently at first; but, before reaching the bridge of St. Angelo, Hilda's flow of spirits began to bubble forth, like the gush of a streamlet that has been shut up by frost, or by a heavy stone over its source.
And the rings on Hilda's finger, and the pride in her new estate, and the pretty clothes that my mother helped her to buy worked a wondrous change in her. People couldn't help looking after her, she was so pretty, so graceful, and had so much faith and worship in her eyes.
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