“In that case, I presume she will choose to perfume her embroidered handkerchiefs with musk, or pachouli, instead of her favorite breath of violets,” responded Mrs. Ton.

And, smiling at their wit, the fashionable ladies parted, to quote it from each other as among the good things they had recently heard.

Only the faint echoes of such remarks reached Mrs. Delano; though she was made to feel, in many small ways, that she had become a black sheep in aristocratic circles.  But these indications passed by her almost unnoticed, occupied as she was in earnestly striving to redeem the mistakes of the past by making the best possible use of the present.

PART SECOND.

CHAPTER XXIV.

An interval of nineteen years elapsed, bringing with them various changes to the personages of this story.  A year after Mr. Fitzgerald’s return from Europe, a feud sprang up between him and his father-in-law, Mr. Bell, growing out of his dissipated and spendthrift habits.  His intercourse with Boston was consequently suspended, and the fact of Flora’s existence remained unknown to him.  He died nine years after he witnessed the dazzling apparition of Rosa in Rome, and the history of his former relation to her was buried with him, as were several other similar secrets.  There was generally supposed to be something mysterious about his exit.  Those who were acquainted with Mr. Bell’s family were aware that the marriage had been an unhappy one, and that there was an obvious disposition to hush inquiries concerning it.  Mrs. Fitzgerald had always continued to spend her summers with her parents; and having lost her mother about the time of her widowhood, she became permanently established at the head of her father’s household.  She never in any way alluded to her married life, and always dismissed the subject as briefly as possible, if any stranger touched upon it.  Of three children, only one, her eldest, remained.  Time had wrought changes in her person.  Her once fairy-like figure was now too short for its fulness, and the blue eyes were somewhat dulled in expression; but the fair face and the paly-gold tresses were still very pretty.

When she had at last succeeded in obtaining an introduction to Flora, during one of her summer visits to Boston, she had been very much captivated by her, and was disposed to rally Mr. Green about his diminished enthusiasm, after he had fallen in love with a fair cousin of hers; but that gentleman was discreetly silent concerning the real cause of his disenchantment.

Mrs. Delano’s nature was so much deeper than that of her pretty neighbor, that nothing like friendship could grow up between them; but Mrs. Fitzgerald called occasionally, to retail gossip of the outer world, or to have what she termed a musical treat.