“Nice! As if any one that was one bit in love would write such as that! No, I don’t want to marry a schoolmaster or a tyrant!”
“How can you, Flapsy?” went on Paula, so vehemently that Magdalen left the defence thus far to her; “when he only wishes for your sympathy and improvement.”
The worst plea she could have used, thought the elder sister, as Vera broke out with, “Improvement, indeed! If he cared for me, he would not think I wanted any improving! But he never did! Or he would have taken Pratt and Povis’ offer, and I should have been living in London and keeping my carriage! Or he would have taken me to Italy! But that horrid home of his, and his mother just like a half-starved hare! I might have seen then it was not fit for me; but I was a child, and over-persuaded among you all! But I know better now, and I know my own mind, as I didn’t then. So you need not talk! I have done with him.”
“Oh, Flapsy, Flapsy, how can you grieve him so? You don’t know what you are throwing away!” incoherently cried Paula, collapsing in a burst of tears. “Maidie, Maidie, why don’t you speak to her, and tell her how wicked it is—and—and—and—”
The rest was cut short by sobs.
“No, Paula, authority or reasoning of mine would not touch such a mood as this. We must leave it to Hubert himself. If she really cares for him, she will have recovered from her fit of temper by the time his letter can come, and it may have an effect upon her, if our tongues have not increased her spirit of opposition. I strongly advise you to say nothing.”
Paula tried to take her sister’s advice, and would have adhered to it, but that Vera would talk and try to make her declare the rupture to have been justified; and this produced an amount of wrangling which did good to no one. Magdalen really rejoiced when the frequent golf and tennis parties carried Vera on her bicycle out of reach of arguing, even if it took her into the alternative of flirtation.
Thekla cried bitterly, and declared that she should never speak to Flapsy again; but in half an hour’s time was heard chattering about the hedgehog’s meal of cockroaches. In another week the excitement was over. The Bishop of Onomootka had come and gone, after holding meetings and preaching sermons at Rock Quay and all the villages round, and had carried off Alexis White with him.
Nothing had come of the intercourse of the latter with his rich uncle, nor of the varieties of encounters with the damsels of Rock Quay, except that society was declared by more than one to have become horridly flat and slow.
Vera was one of these, and the letters received from Hubert Delrio did not stir up a fresh excitement. There were no persuasions to revoke her decision, no urgent entreaties, no declaration of being heart-broken. He acquiesced in her assurance that the engagement had been a mistake; and he wrote at more length to Magdalen, avowing that he had for some time past traced discontent in Vera’s letters, and fearing that he had been too didactic and peremptory in writing to her. He relinquished the engagement with much regret, and should always regard it as having been a fair summer dream—but, though undeserving, he hoped still to retain Miss Prescott’s kindness and friendship, which had been of untold value to him.