A Study in Indifference

There are many spurs to a woman's vanity, but declared indifference is surely the sharpest of them all. When Anna Gessner discovered that Alban was not willing to enroll himself in the great band of worshippers who knelt humbly at her golden shrine, she set about converting him with a haste which would have been dangerous but for its transparent dishonesty. In love herself, so far as such a woman could ever be in love at all, with the dashing and brainless jockey who managed her race-horses, she was quite accustomed, none the less, to add the passionate confessions and gold-sick protestations of others to her volume of amatory recollections, and it was not a little amazing that a mere youth should be discovered, so obstinate, so chilly and so indifferent as to remain insensible both to her charms and their value, in what her father had called "pounds sterling."

When Alban first came to "Five Gables," his honesty amused her greatly. She liked to hear him speak of the good which her father's money could do in the slums and alleys he had left. It was a rare entertainment for her to be told of those "dreadful people" who sewed shirts all day and were frequently engaged in the same occupation when midnight came. "I shall call you the Missionary," she had said, and would sit at his feet while he confessed some of the wild hopes which animated him, or justified his desire for that great humanity of the East whose supreme human need was sympathy. Anna herself did not understand a word of it--but she liked to have those clear blue eyes fixed upon her, to hear the soft musical voice and to wonder when this pretty boy would speak of his love for her.