Page:Firecrackers a realistic novel.pdf/138

 plete satisfying of any desire were for some reason impossible there was always a substitute, a theory which, if it did not appear to hold as much plausibility as formerly, was at any rate still sufficiently reassuring to encourage her to look about, and, as always, she found something to look at. Laura, trembling before the precocity of Consuelo, in turn applauded by George, was a complex spectacle that would have commanded her attention to the exclusion of all other exhibitions in a more propitious period. Even in her present mood this show succeeded in arousing a good deal of her latent interest. Further, the extraordinary case of Paul offered her abundant material for cogitation. Paul, invading Cupid's realm, apparently a slave to the hitherto unsuspected delights of the marts of trade and commerce, served to excellently substantiate her conviction that it was never advisable to decline to drink out of any fountain before one had sampled the water. Vera, too, unhappy Vera, plunged alternately into depths of liquid melancholy and unpleasant and ungovernable demonstrations of blustering fatuousness by this metamorphosis in the supposedly natural characteristics of her spouse, was another object to repay at least superficial study.

Musing in such a manner one day, Campaspe began to believe that enough blessings in the way of vicarious emotion had been vouchsafed her so that she might devote a few idle moments to the casual