Ida was in her boudoir, a tiny little tapestried room, as neat and dainty as herself, with low walls hung with Imari plaques and with pretty little Swiss brackets bearing blue Kaga ware, or the pure white Coalport china. In a low chair beneath a red shaded standing lamp sat Ida, in a diaphanous evening dress of mousseline de soie, the ruddy light tinging her sweet childlike face, and glowing on her golden curls. She sprang up as her sister entered, and threw her arms around her.
“Dear old Clara! Come and sit down here beside me. I have not had a chat for days. But, oh, what a troubled face! What is it then?” She put up her forefinger and smoothed her sister’s brow with it.
Clara pulled up a stool, and sitting down beside her sister, passed her arm round her waist. “I am so sorry to trouble you, dear Ida,” she said. “But I do not know what to do.
“There’s nothing the matter with Harold?”
“Oh, no, Ida.”
“Nor with my Charles?”
“No, no.”
Ida gave a sigh of relief. “You quite frightened me, dear,” said she. “You can’t think how solemn you look. What is it, then?”
“I believe that papa intends to ask Mrs. Westmacott to marry him.”
Ida burst out laughing. “What can have put such a notion into your head, Clara?”
“It is only too true, Ida. I suspected it before, and he himself almost told me as much with his own lips to-night. I don’t think that it is a laughing matter.”
“Really, I could not help it. If you had told me that those two dear old ladies opposite, the Misses Williams, were both engaged, you would not have surprised me more. It is really too funny.”
“Funny, Ida! Think of any one taking the place of dear mother.
But her sister was of a more practical and less sentimental nature. “I am sure,” said she, “that dear mother would like papa to do whatever would make him most happy. We shall both be away, and why should papa not please himself?”
“But think how unhappy he will be. You know how quiet he is in his ways, and how even a little thing will upset him. How could he live with a wife who would make his whole life a series of surprises? Fancy what a whirlwind she must be in a house. A man at his age cannot change his ways. I am sure he would be miserable.”
Ida’s face grew graver, and she pondered over the matter for a few minutes. “I really think that you are right as usual,” said she at last. “I admire Charlie’s aunt very much, you know, and I think that she is a very useful and good person, but I don’t think she would do as a wife for poor quiet papa.”
“But he will certainly ask her, and I really think that she intends to accept him. Then it would be too late to interfere. We have only a few days at the most. And what can we do? How can we hope to make him change his mind?”
Again Ida pondered. “He has never tried what it is to live with a strong-minded woman,” said she. “If we could only get him to realize it in time. Oh, Clara, I have it; I have it! Such a lovely plan!” She leaned back in her chair and burst into a fit of laughter so natural and so hearty that Clara had to forget her troubles and to join in it.
“Oh, it is beautiful!” she gasped at last. “Poor papa! What a time he will have! But it’s all for his own good, as he used to say when we had to be punished when we were little. Oh, Clara, I do hope your heart won’t fail you.
“I would do anything to save him, dear.”
“That’s it. You must steel yourself by that thought.”
“But what is your plan?”
“Oh, I am so proud of it. We will tire him for ever of the widow, and of all emancipated women. Let me see, what are Mrs. Westmacott’s main ideas? You have listened to her more than I. Women should attend less to household duties. That is one, is it not?”