XVIII
HE SPEAKS THE MERE CONTRARY.
Love's Labor's Lost; i.--I.
Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson sat in her bower, enveloped in an
unaccustomed air of respectability, and in a frame of mind exceedingly
self-satisfied and serene. She had secured a visit from a New York
relative, a distant cousin whose acquaintance she had made in the
mountains the summer before, and she hoped from this circumstance to
secure much social advantage. For at home Miss Frances Merrivale moved
in circles such as her present hostess could only gaze at from afar
with burning envy. In her own city, Miss Merrivale would certainly
never have consented to know Mrs. Sampson, relationship or no
relationship; but she chanced to wish to get away from home for a week
or two, she thought somewhat wistfully of the devotion of Fred Rangely
at the mountains last summer, and she was not without a hope that if
she once appeared in Boston, the Staggchases, who should have invited
her to visit them long ago, she being as nearly related to Mr.
Staggchase as to Mrs. Sampson, might be moved to ask her to come to
stay with them.
It cannot be said that Mrs. Amanda Welsh Sampson, dashing, vulgar
social adventurer that she was, had much in common with her guest. Miss
Merrivale, it is true, had the incurable disease of social ambition as
thoroughly as her hostess; but the girl had, at least, a recognized and
very comfortable footing under her feet, while the unfortunate widow
kept herself above the surface only by nimble but most tiresome leaps
from one precarious floating bit to another.
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