It was just because this hedge of gentle reticence denied to a curious mob admission to the inner sanctuary of her thoughts, that they designated her as "odd." They found it impossible to know just what she meant and felt and thought. In their own parlance "they got no further." But it must be added that no one attempted to deny the existence of the inner sanctuary.
In spite of this rather tantalising trait in her character she was popular--every one liked her, for her natural kindness of heart, combined with great charm of manner and more than ordinary good looks, made her gladly welcome wherever she went.
She was an excellent person to confide in, for she accepted the confidences of other women with sympathetic and frequently helpful interest; but when it came to returning those confidences--well, that was quite a different matter.
In her life Philippa had possessed few intimate friends, and the chief of them had been her father. From him she had inherited, with her dark hair and straight eyebrows, a certain direct outlook on life. It was not an attitude of superiority or even of conscious criticism, but more an instinct for the people and things which were, as she expressed it, "worth while," a keen desire for the very best, and a preference for doing without should that best be unobtainable.
Mr. Harford understood as did no one else the depth of pity and the enormous capacity for affection in the heart of his child, and had from her earliest youth striven to inculcate self-reliance and thoughtfulness. "Most women are frivolous and empty-headed fools," he would assert hotly, "with no strength of mind, and no notion of playing the game;" and yet, by one of those inexplicable contradictions with which men of his type so frequently give the lie to their expressed opinions, he had married a woman in whom the attributes he professed to admire were conspicuously lacking.
Graceful, charming, and extraordinarily attractive, but with no thought beyond the pleasures of the moment, Mrs. Harford fluttered through life like a butterfly.
Mr. Harford's diplomatic appointments had necessitated their living abroad, and for a surprising number of years his wife had been one of the acknowledged beauties of Europe. No one could have been prouder of her than was her husband, who was always her foremost and most devoted admirer. For him, her beauty and her charm never waned, and to the day of his death, which occurred some three years before my story opens, he had regarded her as a most precious possession, to be gazed at, caressed and guarded, if hardly to be depended on. For her part she returned him all the affection of which she was capable.