Dunstable, as he rarely could ascertain whether or no she was earnest in what she was saying. So he trotted off, muttering some excuse as he went, and Miss Dunstable chuckled with an inward chuckle at his too evident bewilderment. Miss Dunstable was by nature kind, generous, and open-hearted; but she was living now very much with people on whom kindness, generosity, and open-heartedness were thrown away. She was clever also, and could be sarcastic; and she found that those qualities told better in the world around her than generosity and an open heart. And so she went on from month to month, and year to year, not progressing in a good spirit as she might have done, but still carrying within her bosom a warm affection for those she could really love. And she knew that she was hardly living as she should live—that the wealth which she affected to despise was eating into the soundness of her character, not by its splendor, but by the style of life which it had seemed to produce as a necessity. She knew that she was gradually becoming irreverent, scornful, and prone to ridicule; but yet, knowing this and hating it, she hardly knew how to break from it.
She had seen so much of the blacker side of human nature that blackness no longer startled her as it should do. She had been the prize at which so many ruined spendthrifts had aimed—so many pirates had endeavored to run her down while sailing in the open waters of life, that she had ceased to regard such attempts on her money-bags as unmanly or overcovetous. She was content to fight her own battle with her own weapons, feeling secure in her own strength of purpose and strength of wit.
Some few friends she had whom she really loved—among whom her inner self could come out and speak boldly what it had to say with its own true voice. And the woman who thus so spoke was so very different from that Miss Dunstable whom Mrs. Proudie courted, and the Duke of Onmium fêted, and Mrs. Harold Smith claimed as her bosom friend. If only she could find among such one special companion on whom her heart might rest, who would help her to bear the heavy burdens of her world! But where was she to find such a friend? she, with her keen wit, her untold money, and loud laughing voice. Every thing about her was calculated to attract those whom she could not value, and to scare from her the sort of friend to whom she would fain have linked her lot.
