y together while their
elders rested; two or three times, in the evening, when the ballroom of
the Kursaal was lighted and dance-music played, they whirled over the
smooth floor in a waltz that stirred my memory. Whether it had the
same effect on Mrs. Pallant's I know not: she held her peace. We had on
certain occasions our moments, almost our half-hours, of unembarrassed
silence while our young companions disported themselves. But if at other
times her enquiries and comments were numerous on this article of my
ingenuous charge, that might very well have passed for a courteous
recognition of the frequent admiration I expressed for Linda--an
admiration that drew from her, I noticed, but scant direct response.
I was struck thus with her reserve when I spoke of her daughter--my
remarks produced so little of a maternal flutter. Her detachment, her
air of having no fatuous illusions and not being blinded by prejudice,
seemed to me at times to savour of affectation. Either she answered me
with a vague and impatient sigh and changed the subject, or else she
said before doing so: "Oh yes, yes, she's a very brilliant creature.
She ought to be: God knows what I've done for her!" The reader will have
noted my fondness, in all cases, for the explanations of things; as an
example of which I had my theory here that she was disappointed in the
girl. Where then had her special calculation failed? As she couldn't
possibly have wished her prettier or more pleasing, the pang must have
been for her not having made a successful use of her gifts. Had she
expected her to "land" a prince the day after leaving the schoolroom?
There was after all plenty of time for this, with Linda but
two-and-twenty. It didn't occur to me to wonder if the source of her
mother's tepidity was that the young lady had not turned out so nice a
nature as she had hoped, because in the first place Linda struck me
as perfectly innocent, and because in the second I wasn't paid, in
the French phrase, for supposing Louisa Pallant much concerned on that
score. The last hypothesis I should have invoked was that of private
despair at bad moral symptoms. And in relation to Linda's nature I had
before me the daily spectacle of her manner with my nephew. It was as
charming as it could be without betrayal of a desire to lead him on. She
was as familiar as a cousin, but as a distant one--a cousin who had been
brought up to observe degrees. She was so much cleverer than Archie
that