Page:Terminations (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1895).djvu/95

over there, of endless indulgences and dollars. She had pretty clothes and pretty manners, and she had, what was prettier still, the great thing of all. The great thing of all for Mrs. Saltram was always sympathy, and she spoke as if, during the absence of these ladies, she might not know where to turn for it. A few months later indeed, when they had come back, her tone perceptibly changed; she alluded to them, on my leading her up to it, rather as to persons in her debt for favors received. What had happened I didn't know, but I saw it would take only a little more or a little less to make her speak of them as thankless subjects of social countenance—people for whom she had vainly tried to do something. I confess I saw that it would not be in a mere week or two that I should rid myself of the image of Ruth Anvoy, in whose very name, when I learned it, I found some thing secretly to like. I should probably neither see her nor hear of her again; the knight's widow (he had been mayor of Clockborough) would pass away and the heiress would return to her inheritance. I gathered with surprise that she had not communicated to his wife the story of her attempt to hear Mr. Saltram, and I founded this reticence on the easy supposition that Mrs. Saltram had fatigued by over-pressure the spring of the sympathy of which she boasted. The girl at any rate would forget the small adventure, be distracted, take a husband; besides which she would lack opportunity to repeat her experiment.