Blind Love

The next day, Hugh received a visit from the last person in the little

world of his acquaintance whom he expected to see. The lost Mrs.

Vimpany presented herself at the hotel.

She looked unnaturally older since Mountjoy had last seen her. Her

artificial complexion was gone. The discarded rouge that had once

overlaid her cheeks, through a long succession of years, had left the

texture of the skin coarse, and had turned the colour of it to a dull

yellowish tinge. Her hair, once so skilfully darkened, was now

permitted to tell the truth, and revealed the sober colouring of age,

in gray. The lower face had fallen away in substance; and even the

penetrating brightness of her large dark eyes was a little dimmed. All

that had been left in her of the attractions of past days, owed its

vital preservation to her stage training. Her suave grace of movement,

and the deep elocutionary melody of her voice, still identified Mrs.

Vimpany--disguised as she was in a dress of dull brown, shorn without

mercy of the milliner's hideous improvements to the figure. "Will you

shake hands with me, Mr. Mountjoy?" Those were the first words she said

to him, in a sad subdued manner, on entering the room.

"Why not?" Hugh asked, giving her his hand.

"You can have no very favourable remembrance of me," she answered. "But

I hope to produce a better impression--if you can spare me a little of

your time. You may, or may not, have heard of my separation from my

husband. Anyway, it is needless to trouble you on the subject; you know

Mr. Vimpany; you can guess what I have suffered, and why I have left

him. If he comes to you, I hope you will not tell him where Lady Harry

is."-Hugh interposed: "Pray don't speak of her by that name! Call her

'Iris,' as I do."

A faint reflection of the old stage-smile trembled on Mrs. Vimpany's

worn and weary face.

"Ah, Mr. Mountjoy, I know whom she ought to have married! The worst

enemy of women is their ignorance of men--and they only learn to know

better, when it is too late. I try to be hopeful for Iris, in the time

to come, but my fears conquer me."

She paused, sighed, and pressed her open hand on her bosom;

unconsciously betraying in that action some of the ineradicable

training of the theatre.

"I am almost afraid to say that I love Iris," she resumed; "but this I

know; if I am not so bad as I once was, I owe it to that dearest and

sweetest of women! But for the days that I passed in her company, I

might never have tried to atone for my past life by works of mercy.

When other people take the way of amendment, I wonder whether they find

it as hard to follow, at first, as I did?"