“Ah, I must read to the end. Was she always an abstraction?”
“She did not always seem so,” said Sylvester, as for a moment he met her eyes.
Amethyst blushed, with an inward start, she had forgotten for the moment her resentment; now came a throb of triumph. So he did not hate and despise her, this man who had thought her false to his friend. Had she conquered him too? As her thoughts glanced at the other conquest awaiting her disposal, she might be pardoned for feeling that, for her at least, life held many different possibilities.
“I don’t think your father would believe in Iris,” she said suddenly, with girlish abruptness.
“I am afraid he doesn’t,” said Sylvester. “But why do you say so?”
“He gave me some advice once, that I have found out to be true. But it wasn’t at all consistent with dreams of finding perfection.—At least—after all, I am not quite sure of that.”
She sat for a moment with a perfectly simple, considerate expression on her beautiful face, evidently pursuing a new idea. But she did not tell Sylvester what it was; and turned off the subject with an inquiry for Mr Riddell and other Cleverley friends.
Meantime, it was Una’s unlucky fate to find herself sitting by Major Fowler. Outwardly she was mistress of the situation, and behaved with creditable self-possession; while he talked in a good-humoured, half-joking strain, that would have been suitable enough if Tory or Kattern had been his companion. He took up the old intimacy, asked home questions as to this thing and the other, how Charles fitted in to the family circle, how “Aunt Anna” managed to hit it off with my lady, and Una answered like one under a spell. Then he began to talk about himself, praised his wife to her, said certainly he’d done the right thing, laughed a little at the way he was kept in order—all in the old way, the familiar chatter to his little sympathetic friend. It was all very natural—if only to poor Una it had not been such exquisite—rapture or anguish, she could not tell. Then he went back to an old habit of talking about herself. She was quite grown-up—not a little school-girl—such a fine young lady. Somehow, he had always thought of her as a little long-haired girl. All the awkwardness was ignored, and he made their old relation seem the most natural thing in the world. The poor child’s eyes turned to his, and he smiled in the half-familiar, half-flattering fashion of old times. For an instant his hand, as he poured her out some water, touched her ungloved fingers. There was storm and tumult in Una’s soul, she turned her head away, and put all the distance possible into her voice. He gave an odd little smile, took up the cue, and began to talk society chit-chat, but all the while there was an undercurrent, and Una felt that in another moment they would laugh together at the idea of making talk for each other. There was nothing else like it in the world.
The state of things at last caught Amethyst’s notice, and diverted her mind from philosophy and poetry. With the manner of one from whom a word was a favour, she spoke across the table to Major Fowler, and asked him to persuade Mrs Fowler to patronise the approaching bazaar, and so made the conversation general, for everybody began to discuss it at once.
“Shall you sell rosebuds, Miss Haredale?” said Major Fowler. “Anything, of course, for the charity.”