The Gorgeous Isle

It was a terrible question for any woman to be forced to ask, particularly were she honest enough to confess that no woman should ask it. What right had she to put her finger into any man's destiny unless she were willing to take the consequences and share that destiny if invited? But that no woman could be expected to do. Why could he not have realised her mental picture of him: that glorified being with whom she had dwelt so long? She sighed as she recalled her many disillusionments of the past few weeks. Bath House was the world in little. It seemed years since she had left Warkworth Manor. She found that world a somewhat mean and sordid place. She still loved the gaiety and sumptuousness of her new life, for it appealed to inherited instincts. But she had not found a responsive spirit. The young married women were absorbed in their children or their flirtations. The girls were superficially read, "accomplished," conceited, insincere, with not an aspiration above getting a husband of fortune. Lady Mary, alarmed at last, was become cool and spiteful. Lady Hunsdon was almost an enemy. Lady Constance seemed to have more heart than most of her ilk in spite of her caustic tongue, but she hardly made a sympathetic companion for a romantic young girl brought up in the country. It was true that she had recently made an interesting acquaintance in Miss Medora Ogilvy, the clever daughter of one of the planters, who vowed she loved her and swore undying friendship; but Anne needed more time to reciprocate feelings so ardent, particularly in her present state of mind.

On the whole she liked the young men better, as they were less spiteful and petty, but they had read little and the only subject of which, barring sport and society, they had any real knowledge, was politics, and this they vowed too fatiguing for the tropics. They preferred the language of compliment, they loved to dawdle, to hold a skein of worsted, to read a novel aloud, or "The Yellowplush Papers" or selections from "Boz"; when tired of female society, or when it was too hot to hunt or fish, they retired to the gaming tables. Anne had never dreamed that the genus man could be so little stirring, and although she was flattered by their attentions, particularly by those of Mr. Abergenny, and her natural coquetry was often responsive, for mere youth must have its way, she was appalled by her general sense of disappointment and wondered what her future was to be. She had no desire to return to her manor, and for a season in London she cared as little. She would have been glad to remain on Nevis, but to this she knew that Mrs. Nunn would not hearken. London was inevitable; and possibly she would meet some intelligent and interesting man who would help her to bury romance and fulfil the proper destiny of woman.