"Forgiven me! I will not have his forgiveness."
"Oh, mamma;—if I forgive you, will you not be friends with us?" She stooped over her mother, and kissed her, and then went on and told what she had to tell. She stood and told it all in a low voice, so that no ear but that of her mother should hear her,—how the ball had hit him, how it had been extracted, how nothing had been and nothing should be told, how Daniel would forgive it all and be her friend, if she would let him. "But, mamma, I hope you will be sorry." The Countess sat silent, moody, grim, with her eyes fixed on the table. She would say nothing. "And, mamma,—I must go to him every day,—to do things for him and to help to nurse him. Of course he will be my husband now." Still the Countess said not a word, either of approval or of dissent. Lady Anna sat down for a moment or two, hoping that her mother would allow her to eat and drink in the room, and that thus they might again begin to live together. But not a word was spoken nor a motion made, and the silence became awful, so that the girl did not dare to keep her seat. "Shall I go, mamma?" she said.
"Yes;—you had better go." After that they did not see each other again on that evening, and during the week or ten days following they lived apart.
On the following morning, after an early breakfast, Lady Anna went to Great Russell Street, and there she remained the greater part of the day. The people of the house understood that the couple were to be married as soon as their lodger should be well, and had heard much of the magnificence of the marriage. They were kind and good, and the tailor declared very often that this was the happiest period of his existence. Of all the good turns ever done to him, he said, the wound in his back had been the best. As his sweetheart sat by his bedside they planned their future life. They would still go to the distant land on which his heart was set, though it might be only for awhile; and she, with playfulness, declared that she would go there as Mrs. Thwaite. "I suppose they can't prevent me calling myself Mrs. Thwaite, if I please."
"I am not so sure of that," said the tailor. "Evil burs stick fast."
It would be vain now to tell of all the sweet lovers' words that were spoken between them during those long hours;—but the man believed that no girl had ever been so true to her lover through so many difficulties as Lady Anna had been to him, and she was sure that she had never varied in her wish to become the wife of the man who had first asked her for her love. She thought much and she thought often of the young lord; but she took the impress of her lover's mind, and learned to regard her cousin, the Earl, as an idle, pretty popinjay, born to eat, to drink, and to carry sweet perfumes. "Just a butterfly," said the tailor.
"One of the brightest butterflies," said the girl.
"A woman should not be a butterfly,—not altogether a butterfly," he answered. "But for a man it is surely a contemptible part. Do you remember the young man who comes to Hotspur on the battlefield, or him whom the king sent to Hamlet about the wager? When I saw Lord Lovel at his breakfast table, I thought of them. I said to myself that spermaceti was the 'sovereignest thing on earth for an inward wound,' and I told myself that he was of 'very soft society, and great showing.'" She smiled, though she did not know the words he quoted, and assured him that her poor cousin Lord Lovel would not trouble him much in the days that were to come. "He will not trouble me at all, but as he is your cousin I would fain that he could be a man. He had a sort of gown on which would have made a grand frock for you, sweetheart;—only too smart I fear for my wife." She laughed and was pleased,—and remembered without a shade either of regret or remorse the manner in which the popinjay had helped her over the stepping-stones at Bolton Abbey.
But the tailor, though he thus scorned the lord, was quite willing that a share of the property should be given up to him. "Unless you did, how on earth could he wear such grand gowns as that? I can understand that he wants it more than I do, and if there are to be earls, I suppose they should be rich. We do not want it, my girl."
"You will have half, Daniel," she said.