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My sister does when she can, but of course with a house and family to look after I am sometimes selfish enough to wish she had not married. We used to be such good friends." "Is that all over?" "It is different. She always manages to be busy now," said Temperley in a slightly ironical tone. He plunged once more, into a musical discussion.
Dodge was evidently prepared to stand up for the average corpse of the Craddock district against all competitors. "This is a very healthy neighbourhood, I suppose," observed Mrs. Temperley, seemingly by way of supplying an explanation of the proud fact. "Lord bless you, as healthy as any place in the kingdom. There wasn't one in ten as was ill when he died, as one may say."
I was afraid you were getting bored." "I was," said Miss Du Prel frankly, "so I came away." The young men laughed. "If only everybody could go away when he was bored," cried Hadria, "how peaceful it would be, and what small tennis-parties one would have!" "Always excepting tennis-parties at this house," said Hubert Temperley. "I don't think any house would survive," said Miss Du Prel.
Why not have a notice put up outside the door on these occasions: "Engaged"? Then the meanest intelligence would understand, and the meanest intelligence was really a thing one had to count with, in this blundering world! Hubert Temperley left Drumgarren suddenly. He said that he had business to attend to in town. "That foolish girl has refused him!" exclaimed Valeria, when she heard of it.
"A principle that, in woman, has been desecrated by misuse," said Hadria. "There is no power, no quality, no gift or virtue, physical or moral, that we have not been trained to misuse. Self-sacrifice stands high on the list." Miss Temperley shrugged her shoulders, sadly and hopelessly. "You have fortified yourself on every side.
Hubert Temperley at once roused Miss Du Prel's interest by the large stores of information that he had to pour forth on the history of the district, from its earliest times to the present. He recalled the days when these lands that looked so smooth and tended had been mere wastes of marsh and forest. How quickly these great changes were accomplished!
"It brings her nearer, makes one realize her suffering more painfully." Hadria was silent. Professor Theobald cast a quick, scrutinizing glance at her. "I can understand better now how you were induced to take the poor child, Mrs. Temperley," Lady Engleton remarked. They were strolling down the path, and Professor Theobald was holding open the gate for his companions to pass through.
Miss Temperley was his junior by a year; a slight, neatly-built young woman, with a sort of tact that went on brilliantly up to a certain point, and then suddenly collapsed altogether. She had her brother's self-complacency, and an air of encouragement which Mrs. Gordon seemed to find most gratifying. She dressed perfectly, in quiet Parisian fashion.
As both Professors were to leave Craddock Dene at the end of the week, this was the last meeting in the Priory gardens. Miss Temperley found Professor Theobald entertaining, but at times a little incoherent. "Why, there is Miss Du Prel!" exclaimed Henriette. "What an erratic person she is. She went to London the day before yesterday, and now she turns up suddenly without a word of warning."
"Ah!" exclaimed Valeria with a burst of strange enthusiasm and sadness, that revealed all the fire and yearning and power that had raised her above her fellows in the scale of consciousness, with the penalty of a life of solitude and of sorrow. "Surely it is not without meaning that the places of the dead are the serenest spots on earth," said Mrs. Temperley.
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