ife as exemplified in Europe, and she had
restrained herself from an angry outburst more than once. But she was
too philosophical, possibly too fatalistic, not to have dismissed this
attitude eventually. Clavering could not be changed, but neither could
she. There would be the usual compromises. After all, of what was
life made up but of compromise? But the early glow of the wondrous
dream had faded. The mistress was evidently the role nature had cast
her to play. The vision of home, the complete matehood, had gone the
way of all dreams.

XLII

She was not sorry to forego the doubtful luxury of meditation on the
sadness of life. When Miss Trevor's card was brought to her she told
the servant to show her up and bring tea immediately. She was not
interested in Agnes Trevor, a younger sister of Polly Vane, but at all
events she would talk about her settlement work and give a comfortably
commonplace atmosphere to the room in which tragic clouds were rising.
As it had happened, Mary, during these past weeks, had seen little of
New York women between the relics of her old set and their lively
Society-loving daughters. The women between forty and fifty, whether
devoted to fashion, politics, husbands, children, or good works, had so
far escaped her, and Agnes Trevor, who lived with Mrs. Vane, was
practically the only representative of the intermediate age with whom
she had exchanged a dozen words. But the admirable spinster had taken
up the cause of the Vienna children with enthusiasm and raised a good
deal of money, besides contributing liberally herself. She was
forty-two, and, although she was said to have been a beautiful girl,
was now merely patrician in appearance, very tall and thin and
spinsterish, with a clean but faded complexion, and hair-colored hair
beginning to turn gray. She had left Society in her early twenties and
devoted herself to moralizing the East Side.

She came in with a light step and an air of subdued bright energy, very
smartly but plainly dressed in dark blue tweed, with a large black hat
in which a wing had been accurately placed by the best milliner in New
York. Her clothes were so well-worn, and her grooming was so
meticulous, her accent so clean and crisp, her manner so devoid of
patronage, yet subtly remote, her controlled heart so kind that she
perennially fascinated the buxom, rather sloppy, preternaturally acute,
and wholly unaristocratic young ladies of the East Side.