AGED NINETEEN.
"NINETEEN years old to-day! Will Felix remember?" asked Lettice.
She put the question to herself, since nobody was at hand to hear—naturally obtaining no answer. It was betimes in the morning of an early spring day—scarcely 8 A.M., and the air was sharp, through a wealth of sunshine. Beads of dew sent forth prismatic rays from grass-blades, and hung upon linked festoons of spider-silk. Lettice stood upon the wet grass, careless of damp.
Three years had drawn her out of a delicate childhood into a healthy and well-balanced girlhood. She was of medium height: the face still small beneath a pale brow; but cheeks and lips were nicely tinged, and the slim figure displayed a wholesome rounded plumpness. Nothing bony or sallow might be seen in her: only tokens of a well-proportioned body and mind in right conditions. Despite all the snubs and worries of her "Cottage" life, she had an eminently placid look, a look of habitual content, better than high spirits. She had managed to possess herself of the "little wayside flower," happiness, which so often fades from the grasp of those who have fullest opportunity for its cultivation.
"More than three years since I came here. Have they been long or short?" questioned Lettice, in the half articulate murmur sometimes indulged in by solitary people. After the fashion of a monotonous existence, while days and weeks had often dragged past slowly, years shrank and narrowed under a backward review. "Will the whole of life shrivel up into nothing, when we look on it by-and-by?" she queried. "Or will it open out—broader and fuller—because of the new meanings in everything? I wonder which! Why should one mind so much the little frets, with that lying ahead? And yet—one does mind—" as her memory went to Theodosia. For after all a thorn is a thorn, and while it pierces the flesh, one cannot reason the pain away.
"Never mind now! I'll have my birthday walk," declared the girl cheerfully, putting aside unwelcome recollections. "Nothing lasts always. Some day perhaps I shall have a home with Felix. But that would mean leaving uncle Bryant! Must everything in life hurt one somewhere? Well—no need to look forward. Things will come right one way or another: and isn't the sunshine good now?"
Lettice loved an early ramble in bright weather; and this was almost her first since wintry mornings. Now and again in summer Dr. Bryant would be her companion; a treat to them both, which might not often be ventured on, because of Theodosia's jealousy. Lettice had indeed half-hoped to see him appear on this particular day: but he did not. Why should he?
He was famed for forgetting birthdays, unless reminded of them: and Theodosia would not remind him. Lettice, perhaps, scarcely realised how warm a corner she occupied in the heart of the elderly man, labouring under the disappointment and loneliness of one who is mistaken in the wife of his choice.
Dr. Bryant knew now, with a knowledge which left no loophole for a mistake, not only that his wife loved his money better than himself, but—worse still—that her word was not to be depended on.
"He will not remember, of course. But I am sure Felix will write to me, quite sure," murmured Lettice, as she walked.