Mrs. Conyers was careful not to
pin any one of these on; she had discovered that she possessed a
peculiarity known to some florists and concealed by those women who
suffer from it--that flowers soon wilt when worn by them.
Meanwhile as they walked she talked of flowers, of housekeeping;
she discussed Marguerite's coming ball and Dent's brilliant
graduation. She enlarged upon this, praising Dent to the
disparagement of her own grandson Victor, now in retreat from
college on account of an injury received as centre-rush in his
football team. Victor, she protested, was above education; his
college was a kind of dormitory to athletics.
When we are most earnest ourselves, we are surest to feel the lack
of earnestness in others; sincerity stirred to the depths will
tolerate nothing less. It thus becomes a new test of a companion.
So a weak solution may not reveal a poison when a strong one will.
Mrs. Meredith felt this morning as never before the real nature of
the woman over whom for years she had tried to throw a concealing
charity; and Mrs. Conyers saw as never before in what an impossible
soil she had tried to plant poison oak and call it castle ivy.
The ladies parted with coldness. When she was once more seated in
her carriage, Mrs. Conyers thrust her head through the window and
told the coachman to drive slowly. She tossed the recipe into a
pine tree and took in her head. Then she caught hold of a brown
silk cord attached to a little brown silk curtain in the front of
the brougham opposite her face.
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