V
As he was coming down the lane the next morning, he met the rosy, moonfaced little girl in spectacles, and they stopped for a chat. She told him all about her kitten at home, and talked of other interesting topics. They shook hands at parting.
“Oh, my goodness, Mr. Dacier!” she called, as he was moving off. “I’ve forgotten Miss Henaberry’s letter. I stop in at the post office for her, you know, to ask if there are any letters, only there never are; but there was one to-day.”
“I’ll take it,” said Dacier, not sorry for this pretext.
He was at a loss how to proceed. He couldn’t hurt the obstinate, proud creature by so much as hinting that he knew Mallet would never come back. He had decided to entreat her to give up this elusive lover; and he understood Mildred well enough to know that she would make it hard for him.
Not that Dacier shirked things that were hard. Whatever his faults, he was not lacking in courage and persistence. It was the pretense, the cruel comedy which her rebellious haughtiness made necessary, that he dreaded. He wanted to be utterly candid and truthful with her, because it was his nature to be so, and because he loved her.
He was notably less cheerful than usual as he entered her cottage.
“Here’s a letter,” he said casually.
When he saw her face, however, he was no longer casual. She had grown very pale. She looked at the letter with the oddest expression.
“Oh!” she said, with a gasp.
“What’s the matter?” he asked anxiously. “Please tell me, Mildred!”
She recovered herself, and even managed a constrained smile.
“It’s from Will,” she said. “Excuse me, please, while I read it.”
In great agitation, Dacier walked up and down the room.
“Did she write it herself?” he thought. “It can’t be from him! Good Lord, if he did come back, she’d marry him, whatever he was, just out of sheer pig-headedness! Nothing would count with her, in comparison with her infernal pride. All she wants is to show people—who don’t care a straw—that she hasn’t been jilted. She deserves to be jilted! She’s heartless! She’s inhuman! She doesn’t care—”
When she reëntered the room, every trace of anger and resentment left him. In her face, still pale, but very composed now, he saw plain and clear, her secret anguish and her terrible stubbornness. She was going to send him away, at any cost to herself or to him. She was going to drive away love and keep cold pride alone in her heart.
“Will’s coming back,” she said quietly.
Dacier looked at her. He thought that he had never seen so lovely a face as this, with her dark, straight brows, her steady eyes, her mutinous and defiant mouth. Even folly was dignified there.
“Are you glad, Mildred?” he asked.
What humiliation and loneliness and bit[Pg 108]ter disillusionment had never been able to do, his question accomplished. Tears filled her eyes. She struggled with them, and with rising sobs.
“Yes,” she said. “Of course I’m very glad!”