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 CHAPTER II

CHRISTOPHER

And when perchance of all perfection

You've seen an end,

Your thoughts may turn in my direction

To find a friend.

There are two things which are absolutely necessary to the well-being of the normal feminine mind—namely, one romantic attachment and one comfortable friendship. Elisabeth was perfectly normal and extremely feminine; and consequently she provided herself early with these two aids to happiness.

In those days the object of her romantic attachment was her cousin Anne. Anne Farringdon was one of those graceful, elegant women who appear so much deeper than they really are. All her life she had been inspiring devotion which she was utterly unable to fathom; and this was still the case with regard to herself and her adoring little worshipper.

People always wondered why Anne Farringdon had never married; and explained the mystery to their own satisfaction by conjecturing that she had had a disappointment in her youth, and had been incapable of loving twice. It never struck them—which was actually the case—that she had been incapable of loving once; and that her single-blessedness was due to[Pg 13] no unforgotten love-story, but to the unromantic fact that among her score of lovers she had never found a man for whom she seriously cared. In a delicate and ladylike fashion she had flirted outrageously in her time; but she had always broken hearts so gently, and put away the pieces so daintily, that the owners of these hearts had never dreamed of resenting the damage she had wrought. She had refused them with such a world of pathos in her beautiful eyes—the Farringdon gray-blue eyes, with thick black brows and long black lashes—that the poor souls had never doubted her sympathy and comprehension; nor had they the slightest idea that she was totally ignorant of the depth of the love which she had inspired, or the bitterness of the pain which she had caused.

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