The only trace her "disappointment" left upon her was a slightly bitter way of speaking about men in general, and a dislike to any chatter about love affairs and matrimony. Her own story she was never known to refer to in the most distant way, except once.
Miss Hilary—who, of course, had heard all, but delicately kept silence—one night, when little Henry was not well, remained in the lodgings on Richmond Hill, and slept in the nursery, Elizabeth making up for herself a bed on the floor close beside baby and cradle. In the dead of night, the two women, mistress and maid, by some chance, said a few things to one another which never might have been said in the daylight, and which, by tacit consent, were never afterward referred to by either, any more than if they had been spoken in a dream.
Elizabeth told briefly, though not without emotion, all that had happened between herself and Tom, and how he was married to Esther Martin. And then both women went back, in a moralizing way, to the days when they had both been "young" at Stowbury, and how different life was from what they then thought and looked forward to—Miss Hilary and her "bower maiden."
"Yes," answered the former with a sigh, "things are indeed not as people fancy when they are girls. We dream, and dream, and think we see very far into the future, which nobody sees but God. I often wonder how my life will end."
Elizabeth said, after a pause, "I always felt sure you would be married, Miss Hilary. There was one person—Is he alive still? Is he ever coming home?"
"I don't know."
"I am sure he was very fond of you. And he looked like a good man."
"He was the best man I ever knew."
This was all Miss Hilary said, and she said it softly and mournfully. She might never have said it at all; but it dropped from her unawares in the deep feeling of the moment, when her heart was tender over Elizabeth's own sad, simply told story. Also because of a sudden and great darkness which had come over her own.
Literally, she did not now know whether Robert Lyon were alive or dead. Two months ago his letters had suddenly ceased, without any explanation, his last being exactly the same as the others—as frank, as warmly affectionate, as cheerful and brave.