Having dispatched her visitor with a feeling of intense relief, the old lady felt that she had now ensured privacy and leisure in which to contemplate the position, and to balance the future of the two girls—which practically lay in her hands.
First of all, she slowly read and re-read George’s letter; next she examined the envelope of his enclosure.
Oh, Indian gum, for how much you have to answer!
The envelope was scarcely stuck, and came providentially (as she thought) open in her hand! After a moment’s hesitation, she drew out the letter, and devoured it greedily. It began thus abruptly:
“I hope and believe that you have understood the reason of my long silence, my dearest; more than a year has elapsed since that miserable July afternoon, when you and I said good-bye to one another, and only good-bye, but it had to be so. You knew better than anyone how poor were my prospects, and that, with my mother to support, I had hardly the means of keeping myself, much less a wife, and to ask a girl to engage herself to a pauper, or to bring her to a life of grinding poverty in this climate, far away from all her friends, is in my opinion a very questionable phase of love. I have been working hard for you, and you alone. I have passed in the language, and am now qualified for various lucrative billets—which, alas! are, so far, birds in the bush. Last mail, to my great surprise, I had a letter from my uncle; he has made me a most generous allowance of five hundred a year—and with this addition to my pay, I (but I hope it will be we) could get along very comfortably; and the gist of this is—will you come out and share it? I know you cared for me last year, but that is fifteen months ago. Can you have changed in that time? A long time—half a life-time to me. If you have, I don’t know how I am to bear it. But I trust that your answer will be yes. Colonel and Mrs. Calvert, who are leaving London in the Nankin on the 30th September, will take charge of my future wife; they will look after you, as if you were their own sister, and we will be married in Bombay and spend our honeymoon in Cashmere. You will have a full month to prepare for your journey, which may seem a very scanty margin, but I know a girl out here, who was married and went home at a week’s notice. Send me a wire if your answer is what it would have been last year, and I shall begin housekeeping on the spot. There is a pretty bungalow here, surrounded by a garden, which I have often ridden past and looked at, and thought how well it would do for us. In my day dreams I have seen you walking among the flowers, with a white umbrella over your head, or making tea in the verandah—which is half shut in by yellow roses. I shall have a piano and a trap awaiting you, and I know of a pony that is the very thing to carry you. This is a quiet station—we have only about fifteen ladies, and there are but few dances, etc., but you will not mind that; you can get lots of riding and tennis; bring out a side saddle, and, if you can, a dog. I am writing in desperate haste to catch the mail, and am not saying the quarter of what I want to say. How anxiously I shall await your answer need not be told. I calculate that I ought to get a wire on Tuesday, the twenty-seventh. Good-bye, my darling Betty.
“Ever Yours,
“George Holroyd.”
Betty’s name was only once mentioned in the letter, otherwise it would do equally well for Belle. In his haste he had not crossed his “t’s,” and with a little careful manipulation the name could be altered.
To which of the girls should she give it?
Mrs. Redmond closed her eyes, and endeavoured to review the whole case thoroughly and impartially. She herself was not long for this world, it was possibly a question of a few months; and then what would become of Belle, with her restless ways, excitable, uncertain temper, and miserably inadequate income? She was so pretty—so dependent—so—so—spoiled. If Betty were to go to India to marry George Holroyd she would fret to death—she would break her heart; pending which, she would give way to some of her terrible fits of passion, the very thought of which made the old lady close her eyes. Belle was sufficiently discontented now, and what would be her state of mind when she saw Betty—who had always been secondary to her in every way—depart with many presents, and a handsome trousseau, to India, to marry George Holroyd—a man upon whom she had set her heart!
Belle’s temper was getting worse year by year; each disappointment had left its mark; how and where would it end? There was a touch of insanity in the family! Mrs. Redmond recalled with a shudder how she had once been taken to see her own aunt—a melancholy spectacle—creeping along by a wall, with her long, tangled black hair, hanging like a veil over her face.