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I am not ashamed, I do not even hold that I have done anything wrong; I would have told you before only I did not know it was going to come to this, and for the rest it was like a shut book in my life that I did not want to have to open or look at again. I am like Bridget Rendle," she said, head held very high. "I am going to have a baby. Bridget was afraid and ashamed, but I am neither.

Elderly peeresses, aspiring hostesses, love-sick girls and struggling authors overwhelmed me with their assiduities. I hugged my success, for I knew what it meant they thought that Rendle was in love with me! Do you know, at times, they almost made me think so too? Oh, there was no phase of folly I didn't go through.

I became again the Mrs. Anerton of the glorious days. Sentimental girls and dear lads like you turned pink when somebody whispered, "that was Silvia you were talking to." Idiots begged for my autograph publishers urged me to write my reminiscences of him critics consulted me about the reading of doubtful lines. And I knew that, to all these people, I was the woman Vincent Rendle had loved.

When, some months later, he brought out his first slim volume, in which the remodelled college essay on Rendle figured among a dozen, somewhat overstudied "appreciations," he offered a copy to Mrs. Memorall; who surprised him, the next time they met, with the announcement that she had sent the book to Mrs. Anerton. Mrs. Anerton in due time wrote to thank her friend.

When I first met Vincent Rendle I was a young woman, who had married early and led the quietest kind of life; I had had no "experiences." From the hour of our first meeting to the day of his death I never looked at any other man, and never noticed whether any other man looked at me. When he died, five years ago, I knew the extent of my powers no more than a baby. Was it too late to find out?

After that, when they climbed the alleys of the hanging park, resting in one of the little ruined temples, or watching, through a ripple of foliage, the remote blue flash of the lake, they did not always talk of Rendle or of literature. She encouraged Danyers to speak of himself; to confide his ambitions to her; she asked him the questions which are the wise woman's substitute for advice.

I had to have an answer to that question; it was a ghost that had to be laid. At first I was afraid oh, so much afraid that you cared for me only because I was Silvia, that you loved me because you thought Rendle had loved me. I began to think there was no escaping my destiny. How happy I was when I discovered that you were growing jealous of my past; that you actually hated Rendle!

"The Anertons never separated, did they?" "Separated? Bless you, no. He never would have left Rendle! And besides, he was very fond of his wife." "And she?" "Oh, she saw he was the kind of man who was fated to make himself ridiculous, and she never interfered with his natural tendencies." From Mrs. Memorall, Danyers further learned that Mrs.

Was it possible that Mrs. Memorall did not see what an anti-climax such a marriage would have been? Fancy Rendle "making an honest woman" of Silvia; for so society would have viewed it!

"But then you are young," she concluded gently, "and one could not wish you, as yet, the experience that a fuller understanding would imply." She stayed a month at Villa d'Este, and Danyers was with her daily. She showed an unaffected pleasure in his society; a pleasure so obviously founded on their common veneration of Rendle, that the young man could enjoy it without fear of fatuity.