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Test Bank for Periodontology for the Dental
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Test Bank
MULTIPLE CHOICE
1. Periodontal diseases are as old as human civilization. Periodontal diseases in the early
1800s were considered incurable and beyond the reach of medical skill.
a. Both statements are TRUE.
b. Both statements are FALSE.
c. The first statement is TRUE, and the second statement is FALSE.
d. The first statement is FALSE, and the second statement is TRUE.
ANS: A
Periodontal diseases were considered incurable because they were so commonly found
and always led to tooth loss. Scientific advances over the centuries have led to cures for
most forms of the disease.
PTS: 1
2. Early evidence of the use of substances that acted like dentifrice comes from:
a. Aristotle and the use of scrapers. c. Weinberger and the study of skulls.
b. Albucasis and the use of scalpels. d. Chewsticks with intrinsic substances.
ANS: D
Chewsticks were created from specific tree barks that contained abrasive materials.
PTS: 1
3. Some primitive groups chewed fiber sticks to clean the teeth. The sticks are called:
a. Arraks. d. Chewers.
b. Siwaks. e. Tooth sticks.
c. Mastics.
ANS: B
Siwak is the name associated with chewsticks.
PTS: 1
4. Pierre Fouchard is referred to as the Father of Dentistry. He was the first person to
develop a systematic method for dental practice that included a cleaning of the teeth.
a. Both statements are TRUE.
b. Both statements are FALSE.
c. The first statement is TRUE, and the second statement is FALSE.
d. The first statement is FALSE, and the second statement is TRUE.
ANS: A
Both statements are true. Fouchard was the first dentist to systematically address dental
diseases.
PTS: 1
5. Dentists in the early 1900s developed an individual who would specialize in the
cleaning of teeth BECAUSE the skill was time consuming, difficult to perform, and
limited the time for doing other dental procedures.
a. Both the statement and the reason are correct and related.
b. Both the statement and the reason are correct but not related.
c. The statement is correct, but the reason is NOT.
d. The statement is NOT correct, but the reason is correct.
e. NEITHER the statement NOR the reason is correct.
ANS: A
Dentists developed the role of dental hygienist to provide important preventive services
to their patients while freeing some of their time for other procedures.
PTS: 1
6. Who erroneously believed that women did not have as many teeth as men?
a. Leonard d. Aranculus
b. Aristotle e. Hippocrates
c. Albucasis
ANS: B
Aristotle did not believe that men and women possessed the same number of teeth.
PTS: 1
7. The first dental hygiene educational program was established in what city?
a. Boston d. New York
b. Chicago e. Bridgeport
c. Baltimore
ANS: E
Fones developed the first dental hygiene educational program in Bridgeport, CT.
PTS: 1
PTS: 1
9. The first school of dentistry affiliated with a university was established in:
a. Boston. d. New York.
b. Chicago. e. Bridgeport.
c. Baltimore.
ANS: A
The first university to affiliate with a school of dentistry was Harvard in Boston, MA.
PTS: 1
PTS: 1
11. Dr. Alfred Fones’ first office dental hygienist had been trained in what profession?
a. Nurse d. School teacher
b. Secretary e. Dental assistant
c. Homemaker
ANS: E
Dr. Alfred Fones trained his dental assistant to be the first dental hygienist.
PTS: 1
PTS: 1
13. The first state to pass a dental practice act that included licensure for dental hygienists
was the state of:
a. Georgia. d. Connecticut.
b. Michigan. e. Massachusetts.
c. New York.
ANS: D
Connecticut was the first state to create a dental practice act that included dental hygiene
practice.
PTS: 1
PTS: 1
15. When was the periodontal probe first used to assess periodontal disease?
a. 1840 to 1860
b. 1913 to 1916
c. 1940 to 1960
d. 1970 to 1980
e. Impossible to determine but it was recorded in ancient times.
ANS: C
Periodontal probes came into use in the 1940s to 1960s at the time when graduate
programs in periodontics were first established.
PTS: 1
Into his soul were thronging all kinds of desires and consciousnesses,
for the first time. He wished he were shaved. He wished he had a better suit;
he wished he were handsome; he longed to be rich.
True, the disfiguring blue glasses were hidden in his pocket; but even
so, what kind of a champion was he, dusty pilgrim that he was, for this
princess?
He stood up awkwardly, and his face was dyed crimson, with a shame
the more awful because it was wholly inarticulate. His first words left his
lips before he had time to consider them.
She gazed at him pitifully, her trouble growing. "Ought not to have
come? Oh, David, why? I—I thought you were—my brother."
He said, brokenly, "I have no right." Then, with passion, "I have no
right, have I? You are happy, and among kind people of your own class.
You have no need of a ruffian like me."
He turned away his face, lest she should see the working of his features,
which he could not control. But Rona, with woman's swiftness of
apprehension, had now the key to his unexpected mood. "David," she said,
reproachfully, "are you jealous? Did you think I had forgotten you? How
silly of you! You—you can't have a very high opinion of me."
She took his hand, in a steadfast, trustful grasp. She sat down upon the
bench, and with a gentle pull drew him to sit by her. "Have I deserved it?
Am I ungrateful?" she asked, wistfully.
"Why should you have anything to do with me? Nobody else ever
wanted me, or cared what became of me," he stammered, incoherently.
She lifted to his her shadowy eyes, full of understanding. "Perhaps you
have not saved other people's lives at the risk of your own," she sweetly
said.
She broke in, "Forget you? Are you going away, then?"
He held his breath, for there was dismay in her clear tones. All the
emotions that in his wild youth had never been called forth till now, woke to
life and filled him with an ecstasy which made his heart pound, and his
breath pant, and the currents of his being flow together till his head swam.
"You care?" he gasped. "It matters to you whether I go or stay?"
She turned to him impulsively. His arms went round her; and in a
moment—exalted, unlooked for, sweet with a sweetness unbelievable—her
head, with all its tumbled curls, was on his shoulder, and he was holding her
close, close, as though again she was striving to hurl herself into eternity.
"Rona," he said at last. "Rona, I ought not to let you. I am not a fit man
for you to love!"
"You are the man that saved me," said Rona, clinging to him. "How
strange it seems. I never thought of you as a young man, somehow, until I
saw you sitting here with such a sad, grave face."
"And I," said Felix, with a depth of wonder that was almost stupefaction
—"I actually never knew that you were beautiful until this evening. But
now I know. I see everything with a new clearness. I am a man, and you are
going to be a woman in a year or two. And I want you for my wife."
She was silent, hushed with a new awe. "For your wife? Oh, David!"
"Will you?" he urged, beseeching her with eyes and hands and voice.
"Will you promise that, if I can make a home for you, you will come and
live in it? Will you give me something to work for, something to keep me
from despair? Oh, Rona, I ought not to ask it! How can I be mad enough to
ask it?"
"But of course I shall promise, if you wish it," said the girl, in her youth
and immaturity eager to promise she knew not what, eager to give joy to the
being who, apparently, depended upon her for all his hopes in life.
Even at the moment, even holding her against his heart, and feasting his
famished nature with the sweetness of her womanhood and the brilliancy of
his new hopes, her dutiful words, emphatic though they were, sent a chill
through him. In spite of his inexperience, there is an insight which love
gives; and he knew that Rona did not love him, but was merely willing that
he should love her. She was not grown up, he told himself. When she came
to be completely a woman she would love, as he now loved, with that
surrender which to him was so new, so unexampled a sensation. It was long
before he could calm down the turbulence of his emotions to anything like a
consideration of the situation. But their time was short, and after ten
minutes of more or less incoherent bliss and shy caresses, he began to
explain to Rona some of his thoughts and plans. Now that they understood
each other, these were far more easily explained than he had thought
possible.
It appeared that the girl had not been informed of the extent of the
benevolent intentions of the Squire and Miss Rawson on her behalf.
But she was quite sensible enough to understand that, as she and David
were not really brother and sister, but desired another sort of relationship, it
would not be fitting for them to travel about together, until the time came
when they could be husband and wife.
Felix explained to her, fully and with care, the good prospect opened out
to him by the patronage of Vronsky. He was also able to make her see
clearly that it was dangerous for him to stay in England, seeing that the
police supposed him to be dead.
The main difficulty which Felix had foreseen in this interview, was that
of convincing Rona that they must not make a clean breast of their
circumstances, without giving her the true reason for his silence.
"You know, Rona, you asked me in your letter, whether you might not
tell Miss Rawson everything?"
"Yes," said the girl impulsively, "but I am sorry for that. As soon as I
had written, I was sorry. Because, of course, I see that we can't do that."
—"That you have, or you never would have escaped, the determined
way you did——"
—"And I know that, if these people, who are as kind as the people in a
fairy-tale, do give me a chance to learn more, I shall take full advantage of
it. Oh, David, by the time you come back, I shall be so changed! Twice as
sensible and better instructed, and able to help you—to earn my own living,
or help you earn yours."
"Happy? I should think so. It is such a nice place, and they are so good.
I don't mean only kind to me, but good to everyone. They do their duty all
day long, and the priest and the doctor seem to come to them for everything
they want."
"Oh, very much. Not as much as I like Miss Rawson, of course. Miss
Rawson is more—more—I don't think I can describe it. She has more
mischief in her, somehow. He is fussy over little unimportant things, and he
is rather prosy sometimes. But he is very kind, and he takes such an interest
in me."
He sat gazing upon her as she spoke out her innocent thought. The idea
of her being there, in his own home, until he came to summon her forth into
the world with him, was so surpassingly sweet that it was with the utmost
difficulty that he refrained from telling her how he had first seen the light
within the walls that now sheltered her.
"It—it would disappoint you very much if they should decide not to
keep you?"
She looked earnestly at him. "What would that mean? Would it mean
that you would take me away at once?"
"Yes. They demand that I should make a clean breast of things to them.
I can't do that. I will tell them all I can. But not everything. If they say,
'Very well, we can't keep her'—then I should have to fetch you, and we
should have to fare into the wide world together. And I swear that I would
take the same care of you that your own brother might."
He leaned forward, fervently, gazing deep into her eyes; and her lips
curved into an adorable smile. "I don't think I should be so very much
disappointed," she slowly said. "I believe you would let me learn as much
as we could afford—wouldn't you?"
"You never heard of any other relative of yours, with the exception of
this one uncle?"
"No, never."
"That both my parents were dead. That was all she knew."
"You have no sort of clew to their family? Have you nothing that
belonged to your mother?"
"I had one or two things—a pearl ring, a gold watch and chain, and a
few other things, such as a cashmere shawl and some lace. But my uncle
took them all away. There were no letters or papers of any kind: nothing
that one could find out anything from."
"Then it appears that nobody but this brute has any claim upon you?"
"They would not run much risk in keeping you," said Felix, his brows
knit in thought.
"I expect that was what Mr. Vanston was thinking of when he asked if I
had ever been abroad," remarked Rona. "Suppose they should let me go
abroad to be educated?"
She assented. "I want to see the world," she announced, very simply.
And then came an idea which caused him to smile to himself. What
would Denzil say, did he know that he was befriending that same
scapegrace brother's future wife? He had no scruple in the feeling that
money was being expended for such a purpose. But it reminded him of
another matter.
"Listen, Rona," he said. "I shall send you money whenever I can. At
first it will not be much. But as soon as I am in regular work, I should like
to send you enough to buy your own clothes, and so on—so that you should
not be beholden to these good people for absolutely everything. I have
brought you half a sovereign to-day, just for pocket-money, and I shall send
more at the first opportunity. That will make me feel as if you were real—as
if, one day, you really would belong to me."
He dived into his pocket, brought out a sixpence, and with a pair of
pocket-pliers, divided it neatly in two pieces. Then, with a piercer in his
pocket-knife, he drilled a tiny hole in each half, and made her promise that
she would suspend the charm about her own neck, as he would about his—
as the only tangible sign of their plighted vows.
For one instant their lips were together, the young man trembling,
ashamed of his weakness, his hot heart filled with a surge of emotion so
unexpected as to be to him alarming; and then he was running from her, not
daring to look back, stumbling away in the evening dusk with a heart more
joyful, but with pangs more dire than he had imagined possible.
And now the future lay before him, like the battle-field upon which to-
morrow's conflict should take place. To the old Felix he had bidden
farewell. He had now no mind to regenerate society, only to make one
woman happy. Rona, who knew the worst of him—Rona, who had come to
him at the moment when he touched bottom—Rona loved him.
Then to conquer the world was a mere detail. It could be done, and he,
Felix, was the man to do it.
* * * * * *
*
In the course of the ensuing day, Miss Rawson received the following
letter.
"I cannot tell you how much it would mean to me to know that she was
safe, and in trustworthy hands, during the next year or two. I have thrown
up my old work, and, for reasons I shall explain, I cannot return to it. I have
now the offer of work which will, I trust, turn out well for me, but of such a
character—involving residence abroad and much movement from place to
place—as would make it very difficult at first to have my sister with me.
"But now, madam, we come to the crucial point. You most naturally
stipulate that the kind offer you make is contingent upon my frankness.
Before we go further, let me avow, without disguise, that I dare not be
perfectly frank with you. The reason for this is that we are fugitives. We
have an uncle, who was in charge of my sister, and from whose wicked
hands she was escaping when she met with her accident. Should he find out
where she now is, he would no doubt try to repossess himself of her.
"We are orphans; and in justice to your kindness, and relying on your
secrecy, I will own to you that our name is not Smith in reality, but Leigh.
My uncle made an unjustifiable attempt to compel my sister to adopt as her
profession the music-hall stage—to which she was strongly averse. He paid
a premium for her complete training to a man who was neither more nor
less than an unprincipled scoundrel. On my sister's declining to submit to
his treatment, he tried to starve her into submission by locking her up and
leaving her without food. In rescuing her from this terrible position—only
just in time—I was so unfortunate as to allow her to fall from a
considerable height, with the result that, as you know, she was seriously
hurt.
"We made our escape, penniless and without resources, in the canal
barge.
"You will see that I am being frank with you as regards the
circumstances. I refrain only from the mention of names and places. I am
fully aware that, by so doing, I put it out of your power to verify any part of
my story. But what can I do? My uncle is furious at having paid down a
large sum for my sister's training, only to lose her. He will leave no stone
unturned to recapture her. He has set detectives upon our track, though he
has not allowed the newspapers to make our flight known. I cannot even
give you the address of the school at which my sister was educated, as this
is the first place in which my uncle would make inquiries; and the lady-
principal might think it her duty to answer them, should you let her know
where we are.
"My uncle is my sister's legal guardian until she comes of age. Any
court of law would, on his application, restore her to his care, unless we
could adduce satisfactory proof of his brutality, which would be very
difficult.
"I hope you will see that there are strong reasons for my reticence.
Nevertheless, on reading this over, I feel that it is very likely that you may,
even if you believe what I say, wish to disembarrass yourself of a charge
who might quite possibly prove a difficulty should her guardian discover
her place of refuge.
"I will add no more to a letter already long enough to need apology.
Accept, then, madam, my profound thanks, and my assurance that, however
you decide, I consider myself deeply your debtor. If you feel that you do not
care to accept further responsibility in the matter, please let me know at
once, as I must then make arrangements to fetch my sister.—I am, madam,
your grateful and obliged servant,
"DAVID SMITH.
Summer sunshine lay broad and calm upon the lawns at Normansgrave.
Over all brooded that peace and well-being, that calm which is like the
hum of well-oiled machinery, or the sleeping of a top which, nevertheless,
spins on in the apparent repose. It is pre-eminently a characteristic of
English country life, this regulated prosperity, the result of long centuries of
experiment, issuing in perfect achievement.
All other nations feel it. There is hardly a civilized person in the world
who would not own that in England we have solved the riddle of making
ourselves perfectly comfortable.
Aunt Bee's competent hands still ruled over Normansgrave. During the
two years which had elapsed since the disappearance of his brother Felix,
the Squire had not married, neither was he engaged to be married.
During the first months following the bereavement, with its curious and
mysterious surrounding circumstances, it had been natural that Denzil
should withdraw himself somewhat from society. But as weeks rolled by,
and the police found no clew, there was nothing for it but to acquiesce in
the uncertainty, and to assume either that Felix was dead, or that he wished
to be thought so.
The newspapers had, of course, made the most of the mystery. They had
flung it forth in flaming headlines, they had printed the letters written by the
suicide, they had striven to whip up flagging interest by suggesting clews
which the police had not really found. One enterprising journal actually had
a competition, "Where is Felix Vanston?"
All kinds of letters and answers were sent in, and the Editor promised a
prize, when the truth should at last be brought to light, to the competitor
who had guessed nearest to the truth.
In the December of that year, when the trees lost their leaves, and a
man's decomposed corpse was found in a thicket in one of the London
parks, the whole hateful discussion leapt from its ashes and revived in full
force. Was it, or was it not, Felix Vanston?
The police thought that it was. No identification was possible, the thing
had had too many months in which to decompose. But in what had been a
pocket was a newspaper; and this, being folded very small, the date was
legible on one of the innermost pages: and it was the date of the
disappearance from the Deptford lodging.
Denzil and Miss Rawson, in the absence of more cogent proof than this,
declined to accept the remains as being those of the missing youth.
The Editor of the paper who had started the competition, however,
awarded the prize to the candidate who had foreshadowed such a discovery.
And thereafter, silence fell upon the Press, and the Case of the
Disappearance of Felix Vanston was over.
The world slipped back by degrees into its groove, and after a while
Denzil grew less shy of going to London hotels, and began to lead his usual
life, without the dread of being interviewed. But time flowed on, and he
was still a bachelor, having apparently acquired a habit in that direction—or
—as his aunt in her heart believed—because he was waiting.
If that were so, the period of his waiting was at an end. Two days ago,
Rona Smith, the girl for whom his benevolence had done so much, had
returned from her two years abroad.
She was coming slowly along the graveled terrace, a book in her hand, a
rose-colored sunshade over her head tinging her white gown with reflected
color. Miss Rawson, seated by the tea-table under the big beech, watched
her approach with eyes full of interest, wonder, and amusement.
Denzil, who had been yachting with a friend, was expected home that
afternoon; and his aunt was more than curious to see the meeting.
The letter which the soi-disant David Smith had written with so much
anxiety and care and hesitation—the letter upon which Rona's future had
hung—had been the cause of much doubt and deliberation between Miss
Rawson and her nephew. Aunt Bee was inclined to advise that they should
hold out—should stipulate for frankness under seal of secrecy. She believed
that, had they done so, the young man would have made a clean breast of
the whole affair. And she was probably right. Felix would, most likely, have
acknowledged his true name, and relinquished all hope of calling Rona his,
sooner than do her the injustice of dragging her about Europe in company
of two men, neither of whom was related to her, when but for his
selfishness she might be living the sheltered life of the English upper
classes. He could have been forced into avowal. But they did not force him.
Denzil, with that curious streak of romance which lurks in most
Englishmen, was, perhaps, rather pleased that there should be a mystery
about Rona. The notion that she was to be protected against secret enemies
appealed to a mild vein of plotting which existed in him. He undertook the
risks so vaguely hinted at by Felix, not merely readily, but with eagerness.
The smuggling of Miss Smith out of England was the first thing which
helped to turn his mind off the distressing case of his brother.
Miss Rawson and he took the girl abroad. They traveled here and there,
from one place to another in Germany, visiting the educational centers,
seeking a place where they could with confidence leave their charge.
The girl developed a great ambition to learn. She was happy and content
with Frau Wilders, and willingly remained there during the Christmas
holidays. The following summer Miss Rawson journeyed out to see her, and
found her thoroughly proficient in German, and most anxious to be allowed
to pass her second year in France. This was satisfactorily arranged. Aunt
Bee traveled with her to Rennes, where Frau Wilders knew a lady in the
same line as herself. Rona lived with this lady and attended the public day-
school in the university town.
And now she was educated. Moreover, she was a woman grown. And
Miss Rawson had brought her home from France, wondering not a little as
to what the outcome of the situation was to be.
During all these two years there had been, so far as she was aware, no
attempt to gain possession of the girl, certainly no annoyance of her, on the
part of the uncle who was supposed to be so malign a being.
Had it not been for the girl's own personality, Miss Rawson, who was a
sensible, unimaginative woman, would have been inclined to think that the
tale of persecution was the invention of the brother, as a way of extricating
his sister and himself from destitution. But, in some manner wholly
indescribable, Rona refuted this theory, simply by being Rona.
Miss Rawson, who had been her companion for four or five weeks each
summer, had seen a good deal of her, and was not an easy person to
deceive. She knew well enough that the girl believed herself to have cause
to dread something, or someone. Under the keen scrutiny of Miss Rawson's
criticism, there had never appeared one trait, one phrase, which was out of
harmony with Rona's claim to gentle birth and breeding. Her tastes were
innately fastidious. In all the small minutiæ of a refined girl's habits, she
was above reproach. Her convent breeding had given her an atmosphere of
purity and simplicity, upon which the modern culture of her later education
sat with a curious charm. But there was more than this underlying the
fascination which the elder woman felt but could not classify. She was only
conscious of thinking that Rona was the most attractive maiden she had
ever seen. There was not a girl of their acquaintance who could hold a
candle to her. She was more than pretty, she was truly beautiful, with a
somewhat grave beauty, as of one over whom hung some menace or
anxiety.
But at the nature of this anxiety Miss Rawson could make no guess.
Rona had left the gravel now, and her feet trod the shorn turf, her white
gown slipping over its verdure like lake-foam over water-weed. She had
dignity, she had poise, those things now most rare in the modern girl, who is
generally ill-assured, in spite of her free-and-easy pose. But under the fine
calm of her manner there was a shadow.
She was secretly betrothed to the young man who posed as her brother!
She saw plainly that David must naturally be unwilling that his own
prison record should be known. But why should he insist upon her adhering
to the brother-and-sister fiction? She thought the deceit unnecessary and
unwise, since when he returned to claim her promise, their true relations
must be avowed, and she would stand convicted of a long course of
deception and untruth.
There was, in the girl, no passion to kindle at the breath of his: the
unveiled vehement thing almost paralyzed her with apprehension.
In her first panic fear she wrote and bade him never so to address her
again. Did he not realize that her letters might be overlooked? Miss Rawson
might reasonably, naturally expect to be shown her letters from her brother.
They must be such as she could produce if necessary—the kind of letter a
brother might write to a sister.
Felix never admitted, even to himself, how cruelly this reproof flung
him back upon himself. Her appeal touched his tenderest feeling, and
overwhelmed him with self-reproach. He answered meekly, abjectly,
imploring forgiveness for his rashness, vowing never so to offend again;
and inclosing more money than he could conveniently spare that she might
have all she needed.
She was not at that time old enough to see how the mere acceptance of
his money bound her to him. But it was not long before this dawned upon
her—this, and many other things.
She was a girl of fine intelligence, and she took full advantage of all the
culture put within her reach. Her mind developed apace. She read books,
she saw plays. The world as it is began to emerge before her vision,
heretofore bounded by convent walls; and soon she saw clearly that a girl
under seventeen has no right to promise herself in marriage. She knew that
she had given a promise that meant nothing. She formed, in her secret heart,
an Ideal of marriage, which was not in the least like the gaunt young man,
with the hunted eyes, who had implored her to be true to him. Looking back
upon the little scene in the arbor she could not but think that he had taken
an unfair advantage of her gratitude and friendlessness. By the end of her
first vacation the thought of her secret engagement was a millstone round
her neck.
She still kept to her habit of writing to him. He stood for something in
her life, after all. He was sympathy, kindness, a creature to whom she could
turn for fellow-feeling in joy or trouble. He was as interested as she in her
powers of mind, in her improvement in languages, her music, and her
reading. He wrote more and more hopefully of his own prospects. Always
he kept to her commands, and his letters might have been shown to
anybody. Yet sometimes there breathed through them a current of feeling
which sent a chill foreboding through her. What was she to say when at last
he came to claim her promise—she who knew she had nothing to give?
Her obligation to him weighed upon her far more heavily than her debt
to Mr. Vanston. She became deeply, feverishly anxious to earn her own
living. She had a record of every remittance that David had ever sent, that
one day she might repay him.
Her own complete change of mind encouraged her to hope at times that
he might have changed his. It seemed impossible that he, a grown man, in a
world full of women, could remain faithful to the memory of a girl whom
he had only seen two or three times—a girl of whom he knew so little.
What if his heart were as empty towards her as hers towards him? What
if he still wrote, still paid, only from a sense of duty, and because he had
given his word?
One day it was borne in upon her to try in a letter to ascertain his real
feeling; and she wrote to him, about six months before her final return to
England, after this fashion:
"We write to one another, you and I, of what we do, but not of what we
think. Yet, since we last met, we must have changed, both of us. At least, I
have changed, and it seems foolish to believe that you alone, of all men,
have stood still in a world full of movement, of interest, of men, and of
women too.
"I wonder if you have realized how rash we were to promise any
lifelong bond—we who knew nothing of either life or bonds: we who knew
nothing of each other, of our respective characters and tastes?
"It seems to me impossible that you should not have traveled as far
since then, in mind, as you have done in body. And I want to tell you this. If
you have come to the conclusion—as it is borne in upon me that you must
have—that we were a couple of silly, unreflecting things; please be sure that
I, too, am growing up, that I, too, shall soon be able to work for myself, and
to repay your goodness to me financially, if not in other ways; and finally,
that I, too, see how unreasonable it would be for one of us to hold the other
to such a compact in the future."
After the dispatch of this letter, she had awaited a reply in some
trepidation.
It did not arrive for some weeks, since Felix and Vronsky, out in Siberia,
were much occupied with certain happenings hereafter to be recorded fully.
When at last a letter was received, it was inconclusive. Felix wrote that he
hoped, before the end of the year, to get leave to come and see her. Until
then he thought it best not to discuss the nature of their feelings for each
other. For himself, if he wrote of what he did, and not of what he thought,
that, as she must know, was out of deference to her commands. What he
desired was, as always, her happiness. Just now he was not in a position to
write more definitely, but as soon as his plans cleared, she should hear from
him again.
That letter had reached Rona towards the end of February. She had not
heard since, and it was now July. A remittance had arrived, however,
regularly each month as usual.
The ceasing of letters from David had not troubled her much. Its effect
had been to relegate the whole affair more and more to the background of
her young eager mind, full of plans for the future and not eager to busy
itself with the past.
Such was the Veronica now moving over the grass towards Aunt Bee.
"Nothing could be cold to-day," laughed back Rona, raising her eyes
from her book, but quickening her steps obediently.
"Denzil ought to be here soon if he comes by that train," said Aunt Bee.
"I am impatient to see him again," said Rona, in tones of candid interest.
"I owe him so much, I feel inclined to act like a young person in a novel of
a century ago, and fall on my knees, seizing and kissing my benefactor's
hand! Wouldn't he be astounded!"
"No. I remember well how dignified and proper he always was. But
think how good he has been to me!" She sat down in a low chair and took
her tea from Miss Rawson's hands.
As David had been so careful to keep her in funds, her dress had always
been her own affair. And she had a style of her own.
It was daring to wear a rose-lined hat with the warm chestnut of her
abundant locks; but she achieved it.
Aunt Bee caught herself thinking that, if Denzil really wanted her, he
had better make up his mind at once. Nameless and dowerless though she
was, the Girl from Nowhere was not likely to go long a-begging.
Even as the thought crossed her mind, the puffing of the arriving motor
could be heard upon the still air.