“At all events,” she told herself, as she walked briskly away, “I managed to forestall an allusion, for once, to poor Geoffrey. And now for my little tragedy-queen!”
But Rosamund, though not undeserving of her guardian’s epithet, gave less trouble than Bertha had anticipated. With characteristic want of balance, she was absorbed in one thought only: that of her sister. As long as Frances remained ill, Rosamund gave little thought to Morris Severing. Perhaps the measure of her undeveloped lack of proportion might have been probed by that fact. The memory of a spoilt illusion might come to vex and grieve the youthfulness of her spirit later, but that would only be when the nearer, and to her infinitely more real, solicitude had ceased to be.
And Rosamund, her outlook being honest, knew, and was to know more clearly yet, that her first love had brought her no nearer to that reality which lies at the back of all wisdom, and which for her was still typified by her love for Frances.
VIII
“ROSAMUND!” wrote Hazel from the North. “The most marvellous things in all the world are happening. I am in love—with a man who wears an eyeglass—(you know how I’ve always hated an eyeglass) and he is in love with me. He is Sir Guy Marleswood, and he’s thirty-four, and quite six foot, and I don’t think I should mind if he were five foot nothing. I know I shouldn’t. I’ve known him a fortnight, and yet we both feel as though we’d known each other all our lives, and yet it’s new and wonderful all the time. It’s indescribable. There’s one thing—which I have to keep reminding myself of, but which will assume enormous proportions as soon as one begins to do anything—I mean, write to mother, or wear an engagement ring. (He’s given me a most beautiful one, a ruby marquise, only I won’t wear it.) He’s been married before, and he had to divorce his wife five years ago. I knew it before we met, because the girls here had been talking about him, and said that was why their mother had not asked him to stay in the house, but he came to the dance, and he is staying at the Ludleys’, a mile away. That’s where we met, and I’ve seen him nearly every day since—and the days when I don’t see him are just hell—only knowing that Heaven may open again at any minute.
“Rosamund dear, I know now that I was a fool ever to let boys make love to me or propose in the sort of half-and-half way that a boy does—asking one to wait for him because he may have enough to marry on in fifteen years’ time, and meanwhile exchange photographs and write every Sunday afternoon. You know the sort of thing—that does to tell other girls about, and sentimentalize over when a waltz that you used to dance with him is being played. But when it’s the real thing—when a man tells you that he cares for you and asks you to be his wife—it’s absolutely and utterly different. Guy asked me the fifth time he saw me. He told me about his wife first. The odd thing is, that I don’t mind. Of course I shouldn’t mind about the moral part of it, anyhow—I mean whom God hath joined together and all that—but I don’t seem even to mind about his having once loved her and married her. They only cared for one another a very little while, and it’s all past and over. The present is ours—and more glorious and wonderful than any words can ever say. As for the future—he says he is going to marry me before the end of the year. And I am to put off my other visits and come home this week, and then he will write to daddy, and come down to Cornwall. Of course it isn’t daddy that counts at all, since I can manage him perfectly, but I have a sort of an idea that Guy will get exactly what he wants, even out of mother. He’s the sort of person that does.
“We haven’t told anybody anything. I haven’t the slightest doubt that Lady Alistair has guessed, and the girls too, but even if she writes to mother it’ll only bring things to a crisis rather sooner. I’m writing to her myself this evening, so she’ll know by the time you get this.
“I’m not afraid of anything or anyone in the world. Guy and I have found one another, and nothing else matters. Besides, I know he’ll manage everything!
“As ever,
“Your loving
“Hazel.”