It was quite different from the Sunday when I had gone to church with that strange sense of Fan’s new love. I felt quiet and restful, yet it was such a great thing to have another’s heart in one’s keeping, to take in a new life beside the old.
They both left us on Monday. Stephen was to come up soon again. In the meanwhile, letters.
“I have one of yours to begin with,” he whispered.
It was a silent day for us. No one appeared to care about talking, yet we were not gloomy. Indeed, I think mother, Fan and I understood as we never had before, how much we loved one another.
I went on wearing my cross. In the first letter there came a pearl ring for me. Fan had a handsome diamond but she seldom wore it except when she was going to the Churchills. I slipped mine on my finger with a slight presentiment that I should turn the pearl inside if any one looked at me.
Richard Fairlie and Jennie came home bright and happy as birds. They took possession of the great house, altered a little, re-arranged to their liking and had Mrs. Ryder in their midst. There was no grand party, but some pleasant tea-drinkings and hosts of calls. No one could afford to slight Mrs. Fairlie, and people began to realize what a noble girl Jennie Ryder had always been.
I am almost ashamed to confess how much talking it took to settle our affairs. Stephen wanted to be married in the Spring. That was too soon, mamma and I thought. But there were so many good reasons.
Miss Churchill heard of it presently and came over to have a consultation with mamma.
“It will have to be sometime,” she said. “It will make a little confusion, a break, and no end of strangeness in adapting yourselves to the new order. But here are Nellie and Daisy right behind.”
“I don’t want to lose all my girls in this fashion,” said mamma.