[CHAPTER XXVII.]
DON OR MYNHEER?
'Hear the truth—
A lame girl's truth, whom no one ever praised
For being patient.'
George Eliot.
One morning, after a private interview with Alda, Mr. Underwood entered the drawing-room, hilariously announcing that Alda was a lucky girl this time, for now she had a man in no fear of his relations.
Geraldine was glad of the need of getting into the carriage directly, and that her transit to Mr. Renville's was too brief for any answer to be needed to her companion's warm satisfaction. Affairs of this sort had come so thickly upon the family in the course of the last eighteen months, that she did not feel the excitement of novelty; and she wished so little to dwell on the present, that at the museum, the absorbing interest of her life-study drove out the immediate recollection of the stranger life-study she had left.
There could be no question as to the veritable cause of Alda's conduct to Ferdinand; but Cherry was too much ashamed of it to rejoice in her own justification, scarcely even hoping that Marilda would perceive it.
Most likely Alda would have preferred staving off the crisis a little longer—at least till those keen eyes were out of sight—but she had now to do with a man whose will it was not easy to parry, and whom delay and coyness might have driven off altogether. Cherry did not see her till they met at luncheon; and there was Sir Adrian, who promoted the little lame girl to a shake of the hand. Alda looked gracious and unusually handsome, being, in fact, relieved from a state of fretting uneasiness; Mrs. Underwood was beaming with triumph; Marilda—again there is no word for it but—glum!
There was a rose show at the Botanic Gardens; but Cherry had declined it, and Marilda immovably refused to go. After they had seen the other two ladies set off, resplendent under Sir Adrian's escort, Marilda announced her intention of driving, as she often did, to the City, to fetch her father home, and, more cordially than of late, offered a seat to Cherry, if she did not mind waiting.