She raised her eyes to his, they were dim with tears, but love is easily satisfied, and the farewell look they interchanged, contented them for many a day. They knew that they could trust each other. In another moment he was gone, and the shabby iron gate had clanged behind him. She would catch one last glimpse as he repassed to the train, and—No—no, she must not cry yet. Leaving her basket under a bush, she raced along by the demesne wall, for fully a quarter of a mile, to where it ended, and gave place to a white paling lined with shrubs, and overshadowed by trees: here she took her station and waited patiently, listening with a beating heart for the rattle of the hack car on the hard, dusty highway. It came at last, nearer and nearer; she would not discover herself, no, she only wanted one last look. He was on the far side, but oh, comfort! Oh, happy moment; he turned and gazed back at Noone, until the car flew round the corner, and carried him finally out of her sight. Yes, he was really gone. Then Betty crept out from the bushes, and sat down upon a log, and to the amazement of her three companions, sobbed aloud. She dared not cry like this indoors, where walls had ears; here the old beeches were her kind sympathetic friends. If she were seen at Noone, indulging in such grief, she would be asked to explain the reason of her tears. But that was her secret, and George’s.
CHAPTER VI.
“THINE ONLY.”
“Infinite riches in a little room.”
—Marlowe.
George Holroyd’s departure left an aching void, a desolate blank at Noone. Belle missed him acutely; here was another disappointment, the last and worst! Betty shed secret tears, and even Juggy, at the gate, openly and loudly bemoaned, “that fine open-handed young gentleman.”
Belle was not in love with George, but she liked him, and his departure, without one word of significance, threw her into a paroxysm of angry despair. She severely cross-examined Betty as to whether he had said anything about her, when she had met him in the avenue, also as to whether he looked at all sorry or cut up?
Betty admitted that he had (this with a rather guilty conscience—How could she tell her fierce questioner that his regrets were for herself?) and that deeply dissatisfied lady relapsed into low spirits, a fractious temper, and her old clothes. She wrote to George steadily, and he in return sent her amusing descriptions of his voyage out, of his station, of his munshi, and of his dogs, invariably concluding with some message to Betty—which Belle did not consider it worth while to repeat. Her only hope now—and that a faint one—was that George would write to her to join him; and in her letters, she mentioned more than once how sincerely she envied him living in warm sunny India instead of rainy, melancholy, dull Ballingoole; and imparted her views and sentiments with a charming disregard of conventional restraint. He had always been a most appreciative and attentive acquaintance, but alas! he had never let fall anything approaching to an offer of marriage. He had given her songs, books, photographs, but there had never been a hint of offering himself. “Not as yet,” whispered hope.
She read large extracts of his letters aloud to eager and interested Betty, and interested and puzzled Maria Finny, and indeed there was no reason why she might not have read them straight on from—Dear Miss Redmond to Yours Sincerely, for there was not a line that even Jane Bolland at the post office could weave into a romance; and she talked of “her letters from Mr. Holroyd” so constantly, and carried them about her person so ostentatiously, that Maria began to fear she was engaged; and even Betty could barely stifle the mutterings of the green-eyed monster. The summer was a dull one, especially to Belle; far be it from her to fish or boat on the canal, or to go in quest of mushrooms or blackberries in high-heeled French boots. There were hopeless wet days, which drowned the hay and flowers, and subsequently made the country intensely and patriotically green. There were a few picnics, a few gatherings, where crowds of pretty girls were expected to amuse one another, and men were in a deplorable minority, and even then, stout elderly fathers of families, and married curates. Belle and Betty partook of some of these festivities; the latter was a girl who enjoyed herself anywhere, who was happy in the society of young people of her own age, who played tennis, climbed hills, made salad, and boiled kettles, with a merry beaming face, and did not care if there was not one representative of the sterner sex among the company, since the only man she wished to see, was thousands of miles away at the other side of the world. But not so Belle. Oh, dear no. Her temper and her face were the unerring barometer by which you might judge of the number of the men at a party. If there was a respectable muster, and one of these had singled her out for special attention, had walked with her, talked with her, and made love to her, she was all smiles and sprightliness on her way home. If, on the other hand, she had had no cavalier, she made herself conspicuously disagreeable; sat aloof and sulked, refused to sing, refused to play tennis, presently announced an agonising headache, and withdrew at an early hour, carrying poor Betty in her train.
“The idea!” she would grumble, as they jolted homeward in a local cover-car. “I call it an insult for people to ask us to drive nine miles, and to wear our best dresses, in order to walk round a weedy old garden, with a pack of giggling girls, and to play tennis in grass that is nearly up to one’s knees! I shall never go again, never!”
This was her frequent threat, but the next invitation was invariably accepted, and the excitement of looking over her dresses, speculating on her chances of amusement, and fighting with her mother for the money for new gloves and the fare of a car, occupied her until the event (possibly another insult) came off!