Chapter XIX

Priscilla went home dazed. All her suitors hitherto had approached her ceremoniously, timidly, through the Grand Duke; and we know they had not approached very near. But here was one, timid enough in health, who was positively reckless under circumstances that made most people meek. He had proposed to her arrayed in a blue flannel nightingale, and Priscilla felt that headlong self-effacement could go no further. "He must have a great soul," she said to herself over and over again during the drive home, "a great, great soul." And it seemed of little use wiping her tears away, so many fresh ones immediately took their place.

She ached over Tussie and Tussie's mother. What had she done? She felt she had done wrong; yet how, except by just existing? and she did feel she couldn't help doing that. Certainly she had made two kind hearts extremely miserable,--one was miserable now, and the other didn't yet know how miserable it was going to be. She ought to have known, she ought to have thought, she ought to have foreseen. She of all persons in the world ought to have been careful with young men who believed her to be of their own class. Contrition and woe took possession of Priscilla's soul. She knew it was true that she could not help existing, but she knew besides, far back in a remote and seldom investigated corner of her mind, a corner on which she did not care to turn the light of careful criticism, that she ought not to be existing in Symford. It was because she was there, out of her proper sphere, in a place she had no business to be in at all, that these strange and heart-wringing scenes with young men occurred. And Fritzing would notice her red eyes and ask what had happened; and here within two days was a second story to be told of a young man unintentionally hurried to his doom. Would Fritzing be angry? She never knew beforehand. Would he, only remembering she was grand ducal, regard it as an insult and want to fight Tussie? The vision of poor Tussie, weak, fevered, embedded in pillows, swathed in flannel, receiving bloodthirsty messages of defiance from Fritzing upset her into more tears. Fritzing, she felt at that moment, was a trial. He burdened her with his gigantic efforts to keep her from burdens. He burdened her with his inflated notions of how burdenless she ought to be. He was admirable, unselfish, devoted; but she felt it was possible to be too admirable, too unselfish, too devoted. In a word Priscilla's mind was in a state of upheaval, and the only ray of light she saw anywhere--and never was ray more watery--was that Tussie, for the moment at least, was content. The attitude of his mother, on the other hand, was distressing and disturbing. There had been no more My dears and other kind ways. She had watched her crying on the stairs in stony silence, had gone down with her to the door in stony silence, and just at the last had said in an unmistakably stony voice, "All this is very cruel."