The Third Miss Symons

rietta was touched by the warmth of her welcome. After the squalor of lodgings home was pleasant, and her father's invitation was cordial: "Henriet

ut also because it was getting a principle with her, as apparently with many middle-aged Englishwoman, that she must always be going abr

omenades, short drives, and making and unmaking of desultory friendships began. They grumbled a good

nd museum: table d'h?te luncheon, 1.30; drive to Roman remains, back to Croce d'Oro for tea; separate for shopping and meet at station, 5.20, for train, 5.30; back for special table d'h?te kept for them in the salle à manger. Henrietta would settle it all with Baedeker and the railway guide the night before, and if she had felt apprehension

o England for a round of visits, and by the end of them she was longing to be back abroad. She said that England was depressing, and gave her rheumatism, and that she (in the best of health and prime of life) could not face an English winter. The fact was she did not care for the sharing of other people's lives which is expected from a visitor, and her long sojou

service required of her was regarded as a cross. Sometimes a relation would commission her to buy something abroad, and then the salle à manger would resound with wails, because she must go round the corner

ome attached to the services of the chaplains in the salle à manger, and she soon gave up churchgoing. At first she spent a great deal of time inventing reasons to keep her conscience quiet, such as th

inly occurred to her as an occupation, but she realized that it a

or anything of what she read, but at the same time she was obsessed with the idea that she must always have something new, and would constantly accuse her friends, or the library, of deceiving her with books she had read be

annoyance to efficient nieces. "But that is not demon, Aunt Etta," they would explain, playing patience severely from a sense of duty. She cheated so persistently that there was no room for skill. "I can't

ith pleasurable anticipation, but with a nervous fluster that she might somehow miss something; and the concierge, the porter, Madame, and the head-waiter, would all be flying about the hotel half an hour before it was necessary for her to start, sent on some perfectly useless errand connected with her outing. If it ra

, grumbling. Favourite subjects were her kettle and her methylated spirits, whether the hotel would allow her to take up milk and sugar from breakfast, whether the chambermaid abstracted the biscuits she brought from dessert overnight. Everyone who c

vantage of. She was not a character which does well by itself, and under a domineering manner she concealed her weakness, vacillation, and timidity. She was divorced from every duty, every responsibility, every natural tie, with no outlet for her interest or her sympathy. It seems inconceivable that she should willingly have led such an existence. She was however, much more satisfied with herself and with things in general, than she had formerly been. She did not have stormy repentances or outbursts against her lot; she no longer desired what was unattainable. If she did not have a particularly high standard of happiness or

in form, in moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in