'After all,' said Gerald, and now with a tremor in his voice, 'an old friend—a friend like you—a more than sister—is nearer than any new claims.' She had never heard Gerald's voice break before—for anything to do with her, at least—and she felt that her cheek whitened in hearing it; but she was able to answer in the same even tones: 'I don't think so. No one can be near enough to talk about your wife with you.'
He then turned his back and looked for a long time into the fire. She guessed that there were tears in his eyes, and that he was fighting with anger, pain, and amazement, and the knowledge filled her with cruel joy and with a torturing pity. She longed to tell him that she hated him, and she longed to put her arms around him and to comfort him—comfort him because he was going to marry some one else, and must be loyal to the woman preferred as wife. It was she, however, who first recovered herself. She got up and pinched a withered flower from the fine azalea that Franklin Kane had sent her the day before, and, dropping it into the waste-paper basket, she said at last, very resolutely, 'Come, Gerald, don't be silly.'
He showed her now the face of a miserable, sulky boy, and Helen, smiling at him, went on: 'We have a great many other subjects of conversation, you will recollect. We can still talk about all the things we used to talk about. Sit down, and don't look like that, or I shall be angry with you.'
She knew her power over him; it was able to deceive him as to their real situation, and this was to have obeyed pity, not anger. Half unwillingly he smiled a little, and, rubbing his hand through his hair and sinking into a chair, he said: 'Laugh at me if you feel like it; I'm ill-used.'
'Terribly ill-used, indeed,' said Helen. 'I shall go on laughing at you while you are so ridiculous. Now tell me about the ball at the Fanshawes, and who was there, and who was the prettiest woman in the room.'
CHAPTER XXI.
Althea had intended to fix the time of her marriage for the end of November; but, not knowing quite why, she felt on her return to England that she would prefer a slightly more distant date. It might be foolish to give oneself more time for uneasy meditation, yet it might be wise to give oneself more time for feeling the charm. The charm certainly worked. While Gerald opened his innocent, yet so intelligent eyes, rallied her on her dejection, called her a dear little goose, and kissed her in saying it, she had known that however much he might hurt her she was helplessly in love with him. In telling him that she would marry him just before Christmas—they were to have their Christmas in the Riviera—she didn't intend that he should be given more opportunities for hurting her, but more opportunities for charming her. Helplessly as she might love, her heart was a tremulously careful one; it could not rush recklessly to a goal nor see the goal clearly when pain intervened. It was not now actual pain or doubt it had to meet, but it was that mist of confusion, wonder, and wistfulness; it needed to be dispersed, and Gerald, she felt sure, would disperse it. Gerald, after a questioning lift of his eyebrows, acquiesced very cheerfully in the postponement. After all, they really didn't know each other very well; they would shake down into each other's ways all the more quickly, after marriage, for the wisdom gained by a longer engagement. He expressed these reasonable resignations to Althea, who smiled a little wanly over them.
She was now involved in the rush of new impressions. They were very crowded. She was to have but a fortnight of London and then, accompanied by Mrs. Peel and Sally, to go to Merriston for another fortnight or so before coming back to London for final preparations. Gerald was to be at Merriston for part of the time, and Miss Harriet Robinson was coming over from Paris to sustain and guide her through the last throes of her trousseau. Already every post brought solemn letters from Miss Robinson filled with detailed questionings as to the ordering of lingerie. So it was really in this fortnight of London that she must gain her clearest impression of what her new environment was to be; there would be no time later on.
There were two groups of impressions that she felt herself, rather breathlessly, observing; one group was made by Helen and Franklin and herself, and one by Gerald's friends and relatives, with Gerald himself as a bright though uncertain centre to it.