I do not know at what moment in life, if ever, we realise that we are neither George Sands nor Juliets.  Of course, if we are not beautiful, we recognise early that beauty is nothing.  What are features?  The only thing that matters is to have charm and expression.  Then comes that horrible gnawing doubt of our own magnetism.  Is it possible that, though we are not lovely, we are not irresistible either?  That we will have to go through life belonging neither to the triumphantly beautiful nor to the triumphantly ugly?  Miss Wilcox knew that she was not exactly clever.  But after all, what is prettiness and “men don’t like clever women.”  So she consoled herself with the thought that though her manner “permitted no liberties,” the warm tenderness of her true nature must be apparent to the really discerning.

Poor Miss Wilcox!  She had tried brightness and common-sense, Milton and lawn-tennis, the arch and the aloof.  She would have liked to have been seductive and a little wicked, but she had found it easier to be dignified and very good.  Easier but no more satisfactory.  Evidently charm was a strange, mysterious thing, for which there was no recipe.  A dangerous force governing many things and subject to no law.

Every one was kind to Miss Wilcox.  Lady Mary (Vera’s mother) was always asking her to picnics and lawn-tennis, parties and festivities of all sorts.  On these occasions, Sir Harry invariably chaffed her about the curate, little knowing that his foolish jokes were a source of exquisite and almost guilty pleasure to her.  Was it, she wondered, altogether fair to let him think that Mr. Simpson loved her?  But she did enjoy it so much, the nervous agonising sense of expectancy and then the sudden hot blush.  “Their little secret,” Sir Harry called it and though, of course, it was very wicked of her to let him continue under a misapprehension, it was so difficult to clear the matter up, as, the more she protested, the more confused she became, the more he was bound to think that there was something in it.

Poor Miss Wilcox, battling with her conscience when Mr. Simpson’s passion was an invention of Vera’s to whom old maids and curates were simply stage properties.  Vera with her long legs and her laughing eyes and her happy, unimaginative youth—­how was she to know that the Simpsons of life stand for romance and mystery and longings unachieved?  To some people the impossible is impossible.  One fine day they wake up in the morning knowing that they will never hold the moon in their hands and with the certainty, perfect peace descends on them.

Miss Wilcox was not like that.  She couldn’t settle down to decorating the church and organising village entertainments.  She woke up every morning sure that something was going to happen and went to bed every night dissatisfied in proportion to her confidence.

And then, quite close together, two things did happen.  Miss Wilcox was left a small fortune and Vera became engaged to be married.