"A small cloud, so slight as to be a mere speck on the fair blue sky, was all the warning we received."--PLINY.
After that evening great changes came into Thelma's before peaceful life. She had conquered her enemies, or so it seemed,--society threw down all its barricades and rushed to meet her with open arms. Invitations crowded upon her,--often she grew tired and bewildered in the multiplicity of them all. London life wearied her,--she preferred the embowered seclusion of Errington Manor, the dear old house in green-wooded Warwickshire. But the "season" claimed her,--its frothy gaieties were deemed incomplete without her--no "at home" was considered quite "the" thing unless she was present. She became the centre of a large and ever-widening social circle,--painters, poets, novelists, wits savants, and celebrities of high distinction crowded her rooms, striving to entertain her as well as themselves with that inane small talk and gossip too often practiced by the wisest among us,--and thus surrounded, she began to learn many puzzling and painful things of which in her old Norwegian life, she had been happily ignorant.
For instance, she had once imagined that all the men and women of culture who followed the higher professions must perforce be a sort of "Joyous Fraternity," superior to other mortals not so gifted,--and, under this erroneous impression, she was at first eager to know some of the so-called "great" people who had distinguished themselves in literature or the fine arts. She had fancied that they must of necessity be all refined, sympathetic, large-hearted, and noble-minded--alas! how grievously was she disappointed! She found, to her sorrow, that the tree of modern Art bore but few wholesome roses and many cankered buds--that the "Joyous Fraternity" were not joyous at all--but, on the contrary, inclined to dyspepsia and discontentment. She found that even poets, whom she had fondly deemed were the angel-guides among the children of this earth,--were most of them painfully conceited, selfish in aim and limited in thought,--moreover, that they were often so empty of all true inspiration, that they were actually able to hate and envy one another with a sort of womanish spite and temper,--that novelists, professing to be in sympathy with the heart of humanity, were no sooner brought into contact one with another, than they plainly showed by look, voice, and manner, the contempt they entertained for each other's work,--that men of science were never so happy as when trying to upset each other's theories;--that men of religious combativeness were always on the alert to destroy each other's creeds,--and that, in short, there was a very general tendency to mean jealousies, miserable heart-burnings and utter weariness all round.