“Now...” he said.
He held her closely and for the first time kissed her lips.
Book Two—Chapter Nineteen.
Esmé was married from her sister’s house very quietly, and with what Rose considered quite unnecessary haste. The whole affair was so sudden and so altogether unexpected that she scarcely knew whether to be the more pleased or the more dismayed by her sister’s change of fortune. She never felt quite at ease with her future brother-in-law, and in her heart she regretted that it was not George Sinclair upon whom Esmé’s choice had fallen. Marriage with Hallam meant a more complete separation from the old life: it would remove the girl altogether from her former associations. While she recognised the worldly advantages of the match she resented this: had Esmé married Sinclair they would have continued in touch with one another. But Hallam intended making his home in Cape Town, in one of the suburbs, after a prolonged honeymoon spent in Europe. The honeymoon, she gathered, would extend over a year.
It was all very amazing and rather wonderful. And Esmé appeared to be supremely happy; that, after all, was the chief thing.
Rose, while she watched from her seat in church, the girl standing before the altar beside the man whose name she was taking, experienced a curious misgiving which, though she felt it to be unreasonable, she could not shake off. Largely, she believed, she was influenced by something Sinclair had said when she informed him of Esmé’s engagement. He had been taken by surprise and was greatly upset by the news. She had very vividly in her memory the sight of his face as he sat and stared at her with stunned, blue eyes, and muttered hoarsely:
“My God! ... Hallam! ... I could have stood it had it been any one else.”
She had asked him what he meant, what he knew of Hallam? And he had answered shortly, “Nothing,” and gone away hurriedly. She had not seen him since.