The first thing he did was to hail a cab, and despatch the man straight back to Harperton for Miss West’s luggage, desiring him to bring it to the station.
“Why, what does it mean? Are they so very angry?” she asked with blanched cheeks. “Oh, you don’t mean that they are sending me away?” For she noticed that Mr. Wynne looked unusually pale and grave.
“Come down here with me,” leading her into some public gardens that they were passing, “and I will tell you all about it.”
The gardens were miserably wintry. Snow lay on the ground, a couple of boys were snowballing, some starving red-wings fluttered across the path, a granite-grey sky lowered overhead. Surely it was the last place on God’s earth in which to relate a love tale; and the girl herself, what a picture of misery! Oh! thought the young man, if Mrs. Wolferton had but been at home—but, alas! she was abroad—she would have been a true friend to this poor forlorn child. Madeline was, of course, wearing her evening dress, such as it was—at any rate, it was thin. A shabby little plush opera cloak barely covered her perishing neck and arms. Over this was drawn a meagre black cape. On her head she wore a sunburnt sailor hat; in her frozen, mittened hand she held a fan; her face was pinched with cold, and white with anxiety. No lovely lady-fair was here to woo this bleak January forenoon. And what of ambition—the stern, jealous mistress to whom he was pledged?
“They are very angry, senselessly angry,” began the young man. “They won’t take you back again, and have actually packed your boxes ready for removal. However, when one door shuts, another opens. There is a home ready for you, Madeline. Can you guess where it is?”
She gazed at Mr. Wynne, and stood perfectly still and very white, with her thin, sensitive lips tightly pressed together, and made no reply.
“You know that it is my home,” he continued eagerly. “I need not tell you that I love you, and so well do I love you, that until now I have never dared even to whisper my love. I am poor, I have my way to make as yet, it may be a life of struggling poverty. Can you share it—will you venture, Madeline?”
The girl stepped back a pace, and suddenly sat down upon an iron garden bench, still silent, and covered her face with her mittened hands.
“Will you not answer me!” he pleaded. He dared not remove her hands, or offer her a caress. The snowballing had ceased; the present scene in real life attracted the two boys, who had drawn near. The lady was sick, or looked like it.
“You do not mean it,” she faltered. “I know you are very, very kind, but I cannot accept your pity, for that is what it comes to.”