Page:The Yellow Book - 07.djvu/317

 I had a chat with her one morning in April, and I learnt the reason of her altered looks. Martha had got a "young man"—a young man who, she believed, really cared for her, and wished to marry her. Meantime they intended "to keep company" together. All this she confided to me shyly, with many blushes, and I—whom love and youth seemed alike to have deserted—I sighed a little as I listened to her.

Perhaps because I envied her somewhat, perhaps because (now that the girl was comparatively happy) she no longer appealed to my warmest sympathies, I did not, from this time, take so keen an interest in her. And for this I have many times, especially since my own life warmed under a new sunshine, reproached myself.

Martha was much happier than she had been, but Martha would have been glad of a little sympathy from me all the same. She had grown accustomed to my interest in her; but now, I fear, she looked for it in vain. She used sometimes to linger beside the door when she came into my bedroom, and once, looking up quickly, I caught a wistful expression on her face which it hurts me now to remember. But there was much to occupy me just then, and Martha had her lover; I did not consider that she needed me.

I wonder how far, and how often, we are responsible for the misfortunes of those who live under the same roof, and yet are not upon the same level, with ourselves. I wonder how often a frank word of warning, of sympathy, or of advice would save our servant girls from the miserable marriages, or the still more cruel abandonments, which so frequently become their portion. I don't know. Perhaps no one of us can stand between another and her fate; perhaps a hundred impalpable differences of thought, custom, and education build a wall between us and our servants, which