The second daughter of the Vane household was a very different character
from her sensitive and highly-strung sister. The fairies who had
attended her christening, and bequeathed upon the infant the gifts of
industry, common sense, and propriety, forgot to bestow at the same time
that most valuable of all qualities,--the power to awaken love! Her
relatives loved Agnes--"Of course," they would have said; but when "of
course" is added in this connection, it is sadly eloquent! The poor
whom she visited were basely ungrateful for her doles, and when she
approached empty-handed, took the occasion to pay a visit to a
neighbour's back yard, leaving her to flay her knuckles on an
unresponsive door.
Agnes had many acquaintances, but no friends, and none of the young men
who frequented the house had exhibited even a passing inclination to pay
her attention.
Edith had been a belle in her day; while as for Margot, every masculine
creature gravitated towards her as needles to a magnet. Among various
proposals of marriage had been one from so solid and eligible a parti,
that even the doting father had laid aside his grudge, and turned into
special pleader. He had advanced one by one the different claims to
consideration possessed by the said suitor, and to every argument Margot
had meekly agreed, until the moment arrived at which she was naturally
expected to say "Yes" to the concluding exhortation, when she said "No"
with much fervour, and stuck to it to the end of the chapter. Pressed
for reasons for her obstinacy, she could advance none more satisfying
than that "she did not like the shape of his ears"! but the worthy man
was rejected nevertheless, and took a voyage to the Cape to blow away
his disappointment.
No man crossed as much as a road for the sake of Agnes Vane! It was a
tragedy, because this incapacity of her nature by no means prohibited
the usual feminine desire for appreciation. Agnes could not understand
why she was invariably passed over in favour of her sisters, and why
even her father was more influenced by the will-o'-the-wisp Margot than
by her own staid maxims. Agnes could not understand many things. In
this obtuseness, perhaps, and in a deadly lack of humour lay the secret
of her limitations.
On the morning after the conversation between the brother and sister
recorded in the last chapter the young poet paced his attic sitting-
room, wrestling with lines that halted, and others which were palpably
artificial. Margot's accusations had gone home, and instead of
indulging in fresh flights, he resolved to correct certain errors in the
lines now on hand until the verses should be polished to a flawless
whole. Any one who has any experience with the pen understands the
difficulty of such a task, and the almost hopeless puzzle of changing a
stone in the mosaic without disturbing the whole. The infinite capacity
for taking pains is not by any means a satisfying definition of genius,
but it is certainly one great secret of success.