Polly was thinking over these utterances, as she sat before the drawing-room fire, dressed in white muslin, with black sash and ribbons. In the first decade of the nineteenth century white muslin was counted to be the correct attire for a girl, morning, noon and evening, summer and winter, no matter what the weather might be. Polly looked rather blue and chilly, with her bare arms and shoulders, the latter covered but lightly with a thin black scarf.
She was as pretty as ever, but her colouring was less brilliant than of old, while the sweet eyes contained a touch of sadness. Molly, dressed to match, though with a good deal more of white and less of black, was busily reading to herself on the other side of the fireplace.
It was a cold April afternoon, five o’clock dinner being over. Mr. and Mrs. Bryce were out on one of their innumerable engagements. Mr. Bryce—poor man!—would greatly have preferred a quiet evening at home with the girls to the most brilliant assemblage of rank and fashion; but his relentless wife dragged him in her wake—an unwilling and helpless victim—to dinner-parties, balls, crushes, routs, innumerable.
“Molly, the Admiral is at home again. ’Tis a fit of the gout, Mrs. Peirce tells me. I saw her to-day, and she is vexed, for it makes him roar like a wild beast. And though ’tis doubtless true, as the faculty say, that the gout sets a man up again, yet the setting up is by no means pleasant. And Mrs. Peirce and the Admiral are sorely troubled about Will, for since he was taken prisoner, all that long while ago, never a word has reached them about him. O this weary war!”
Molly murmured one or two indistinct responses to the early part of Polly’s speech. The last four words made her look up. Then she stepped across, kissed Polly’s brow tenderly, and went back to her seat.
“What is it that you are reading, Molly?”
“The _Edinburgh Review_ for this month—an article on ‘Marmion.’ And, Polly—would you think it?—the editor has no appreciation for our great poet’s genius! No, none whatever. He writes—he writes as if Mr. Scott were but a common man like any other scribbler, and not the mighty world-wide genius that he is.”
“Would that be a paper by Mr. Jeffrey? But he knows Mr. Scott. The two are friends. Can he find it in his heart to blame his friend? And what may he see to find fault with?”