Americans -- Italy -- Fiction; New England -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
As the day passed, Mrs. Milray's angry eyes seemed to search her out for
scorn whenever Clementina found herself the centre of her last night's
celebrity. Many people came up and spoke to her, at first with a certain
expectation of knowingness in her, which her simplicity baffled. Then
they either dropped her, and went away, or stayed and tried to make
friends with her because of this; an elderly English clergyman and
his wife were at first compassionately anxious about her, and then
affectionately attentive to her in her obvious isolation. Clementina's
simple-hearted response to their advances appeared to win while it
puzzled them; and they seemed trying to divine her in the strange double
character she wore to their more single civilization. The theatrical
people thought none the worse of her for her simple-heartedness,
apparently; they were both very sweet to her, and wanted her to promise
to come and see them in their little box in St. John's Wood. Once,
indeed, Clementina thought she saw relenting in Mrs. Milray's glance,
but it hardened again as Lord Lioncourt and Mr. Ewins came up to her,
and began to talk with her. She could not go to her chair beside
Milray, for his wife was now keeping guard of him on the other side with
unexampled devotion. Lord Lioncourt asked her to walk with him and she
consented. She thought that Mr. Ewins would go and sit by Mrs. Milray,
of course, but when she came round in her tour of the ship, Mrs. Milray
was sitting alone beside her husband.
After dinner she went to the library and got a book, but she could not
read there; every chair was taken by people writing letters to send back
from Queenstown in the morning; and she strayed into the ladies'
sitting room, where no ladies seemed ever to sit, and lost herself in a
miserable muse over her open page.
Some one looked in at the door, and then advanced within and came
straight to Clementina; she knew without looking up that it was Mrs.
Milray. “I have been hunting for you, Miss Claxon,” she said, in a voice
frostily fierce, and with a bearing furiously formal. “I have a letter
to Miss Milray that my husband wished me to write for you, and give you
with his compliments.”
“Thank you,” said Clementina. She rose mechanically to her feet, and at
the same time Mrs. Milray sat down.
“You will find Miss Milray,” she continued, with the same glacial
hauteur, “a very agreeable and cultivated lady.”
Clementina said nothing; and Mrs. Milray added,
“And I hope she may have the happiness of being more useful to you than
I have.”
“What do you mean, Mrs. Milray?” Clementina asked with unexpected spirit
and courage.
“I mean simply this, that I have not succeeded in putting you on your
guard against your love of admiration--especially the admiration
of gentlemen. A young girl can't be too careful how she accepts the
attentions of gentlemen, and if she seems to invite them--”
“Mrs. Milray!” cried Clementina. “How can you say such a thing to me?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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