Few people can resist doing what is universally expected of them.  This invisible pressure is more difficult to stand against than individual tyranny.  There are no tragedies in our modern life so pathetic as the ossification of women’s hearts when love is crushed under the compulsion of social and caste requirements.  Everybody expected that Evelyn would accept Lord Montague.  It could be said that for her own reputation the situation required this consummation of the intimacy of the season.  And the mother did not hesitate to put this interpretation upon the events which were her own creation.

But with such a character as Evelyn, who was a constant puzzle to her mother, this argument had very little weight compared with her own sense of duty to her parents.  Her somewhat ideal education made worldly advantages of little force in her mind, and love the one priceless possession of a woman’s heart which could not be bartered.  And yet might there not be an element of selfishness in this—­might not its sacrifice be a family duty?  Mrs. Mavick having found this weak spot in her daughter’s armor, played upon it with all her sweet persuasive skill and show of tenderness.

“Of course, dear,” she said, “you know what would make me happy.  But I do not want you to yield to my selfishness or even to your father’s ambition to see his only child in an exalted position in life.  I can bear the disappointment.  I have had to bear many.  But it is your own happiness I am thinking of.  And I think also of the cruel blow your refusal will inflict upon a man whose heart is bound up in you.”

“But I don’t love him.”  The girl was very pale, and she spoke with an air of weariness, but still with a sort of dogged persistence.

“You will in time.  A young girl never knows her own heart, any more than she knows the world.”

“Mother, that isn’t all.  It would be a sin to him to pretend to give him a heart that was not his.  I can’t; I can’t.”

“My dear child, that is his affair.  He is willing to trust you, and to win your love.  When we act from a sense of duty the way is apt to open to us.  I have never told you of my own earlier experience.  I was not so young as you are when I married Mr. Henderson, but I had not been without the fancies and experiences of a young girl.  I might have yielded to one of them but for family reasons.  My father had lost his fortune and had died, disappointed and broken down.  My mother, a lovely woman, was not strong, was not capable of fighting the world alone, and she depended upon me, for in those days I had plenty of courage and spirit.  Mr. Henderson was a widower whom we had known as a friend before the death of his accomplished wife.  In his lonesomeness he turned to me.  In our friendlessness I turned to him.  Did I love him?  I esteemed him, I respected him, I trusted him, that was all.  He did not ask more than that.  And what a happy life we had!  I shared in all his great plans.