Miss Serena was talented in taking offence at small things. She had evolved the watch-and-chain idea and she thought it should have received more consideration. In addition she had the kind of memory that always holds the wrong things. "Books! I suppose you mean a kind of books that we certainly don't have many of here!--French novels and Darwin and the kind of books those two Northern women were reading this summer! Even when you were a child--don't you remember, mother?--you had a perfect talent for getting your hands on debasing literature! I supposed you had outgrown it. I'm sure Mrs. LeGrand never encouraged it. A hundred dollars worth of books!--and I suppose you are to choose them! Well, if I were father, I'd look over the list first."
"Aunt Serena," said Hagar, with a Spanish gravity and courtesy, "there are times when I understand the most violent crimes.... Yes; I know you don't know what I mean."
That was in August. September passed and part of October, and then, late in that month, Hagar went to New York.
Medway Ashendyne and his wife were travelling in the East. Next year or the year after, they might, Medway wrote, be in America. In the meantime, Hagar must have advantages. He had not the least idea, he wrote his father, what kind of a person she was. Her letters were formal, toneless and colourless to a degree. He hoped she had not inherited--But whatever she had inherited, she was, of course, his daughter, and he must take care of her, being now in a position properly to do so. His wife suggested, for the moment, a winter in New York, properly chaperoned. The money would be forthcoming (there followed a memorandum of a handsome sum placed in bank to the Colonel's credit). He could, he knew, leave it to his father and mother to see that she _was_ properly chaperoned. His wife had thought of making certain suggestions, but upon talking it over together, they had come to the conclusion that, at the moment, at least, it would be wisest not to interfere with the Gilead Balm order and way of life. It was admirably suited, he judged, for a young girl's bringing up--much better than the modern American way of doing things. Only in France--or the Orient--was the _jeune fille_ really preserved.