"You are a lively companion, I must say," the latter remarked, as she alighted.
Julia turned from her to hasten up the wide staircase. Francesca paused to make inquiry, and before Julia reached the top of the first flight Francesca's voice followed her. "He has not appeared yet! I told you so."
Nor did he appear. Dinner-time arrived, but no Harvey, and no letter from Harvey. Through the evening Julia watched in vain. She grew heart-sick with disappointment—such a tiny disappointment Francesca thought it, while Julia hardly knew how to face the prospect of another long night and day without him. She was hurt and grieved too that he had not written. He might surely have sent one line.
Till bed-time came Julia kept up pretty well, but when once alone tears were allowed full swing. Nobody would be any the wiser, so why not? The old desolate feeling, often hers in years gone by, resumed its sway, and with it was a new pain. Did Harvey really care for her as intensely as she loved him? If he did, could he stay away one hour longer than was absolutely necessary in this their first month of married life?
Julia knew practically nothing of the help from Above which may be had through these fretting cares. Even theoretically she knew very little. Religion for Francesca Trevor meant going to Church once every Sunday in a fascinating costume, and occasionally adding her name to some benevolent subscription-list headed by a marchioness or an earl's daughter. And since Francesca had had the main part of Julia's religious training in her hands for twelve years past, it is not surprising if Julia's religious education were defective.
As a child indeed she had been somewhat better taught, not personally by her parents, who were in India from her infancy until their death, but by a certain lady who had charge of her till after her ninth birthday. Francesca then, on the death of her parents one after the other, came home—she had not been out more than a year—and the two sisters went to live with an old uncle, Francesca setting herself thenceforth to the deliberate undoing of Julia's early training. She was resolved to prevent all "particularity of views," as she would have described it, in her young sister. By which Francesca simply meant that it mattered not at all to her what was or was not truth in questions touching a life to come. All she desired was that Julia should think nothing, believe nothing, do nothing which might one day stand in the way of "a good marriage."
Francesca's efforts, followed out with a perseverance worthy of some better cause, met with proportionate success. There were unhappily no counter influences. The old uncle left everything in Francesca's hands; and when Francesca married— "well" as she said, looking on the matter purely from a money and society point of view—Julia lived with her still. So by this time Julia really had no "particular views" at all on the subject of religion. She did not know what she thought, or what she ought to think.
When Harvey Dalrymple asked her to marry him, it never even occurred to her to consider whether he were a good man, or what manner of principles he held. She only knew that she loved him, that to know of his love for her filled life with happiness, that she wanted nothing and cared for nothing in addition.
Yet in her secret self she did want, did care. For no purely human love can ever absolutely satisfy the heart which is made for higher things, and in the brightest floods of mere earth-sunshine the question must still arise—What lies beyond?
To that question, old as the human race, Julia had never even attempted to find an answer. She put it aside, thrust it out of sight. She lived solely in the present—a bright present of late, but a cloud had come over the brightness already. She had little expected on her wedding-day to have to sob herself to sleep alone scarcely four weeks later.