At the end of the season he proposed and she accepted him. She knew he proposed for her money, and she knew that, besides being mercenary, he was a poor creature in every way. Most people could not have borne long with his society, but she, unaccustomed to companionship, felt that he sufficed her. She did not think much of the future. When she did, she realized that it was hardly possible they could marry. But meanwhile it was something—she would have been ashamed to own how much—to have someone call her "dear." Once he attained to "dearest," but he was evidently frightened at his temerity, and did not repeat the experiment.
She announced the engagement, and a letter from Minna came flying to the Riviera, saying that all sorts of terrible things were known about the Colonel, and imploring Henrietta to desist. She did not desist, but very soon the Colonel did, having discovered that her fortune was not so large as he had been given to suppose. There was a solid something it is true, but for Henrietta, quite middle-aged and decidedly cross (she imagined she was never cross with him), he felt he must have a very considerable something. He wrote a letter breaking off the engagement, and left the Riviera abruptly, having made a good thing out of his season. Henrietta had lent him, he said—given, others said—over three hundred pounds.
"And now we shall have a terrible piece of work," said Minna to Louie. "You know what Henrietta always is—what she was about that other affair with a man years ago, and again when Evelyn's little girl died. She gets so excited and overwrought."
But Henrietta quite upset their expectations. This, which most people might have thought the most serious misfortune which had befallen her, affected her very little. In her heart of hearts she was saying: "Well, when all's said and done, I've had my offer like everyone else." She was grateful for the "dears" too. She did not realize that there had been absolutely nothing behind them. She answered the Colonel's speedy application for more money, and continued to send him supplies from time to time.
Evelyn and Herbert had returned to England, and had settled on the South Coast. Two boys had been born in Canada, and had grown and prospered. Henrietta stayed with Evelyn for a fortnight whenever she was back in England, but somehow the visits were not the pleasure they should have been.
Evelyn was still delicate, and Herbert had begged Henrietta when she saw her to make no allusion to their loss. Evelyn was delighted at showing her boys, and Henrietta was pleased for her that she should have them, but to her they did not in the least take the place of the dead. They were not hers; she was almost indignant with Evelyn for caring for them so much, and accused her in her heart of forgetfulness. This made her irritable, which Herbert resented, and then Evelyn was nervous because Herbert and Henrietta did not get on well together. Evelyn's letters to her were very affectionate, the only real pleasure, in any reasonable sense of the word, in Henrietta's life.
Sometimes Evelyn and her husband and boys came out to stay with Henrietta. The visits were not occasions of much happiness, and a certain day remained for years as a mild nightmare in Evelyn's memory. They were all in Milan one spring, when the patron of the hotel announced that his lady cousin, who lived at some out-of-the-way little country town, had heard from her friend, a priest in that same little town, that on Tuesday there was to be a special festa in connection with a local saint. Would the English ladies and gentlemen care to go? The patron himself had the contempt of an enlightened man for saints and festas, but he knew the curious attraction which such childishness possesses for the English tourist.
All was arranged. The railway company had never intended that the little town should be reached from Milan, but with an early start and much changing of trains it was possible to accomplish the journey in two hours and a half.
They arrived. There was no surprise among the hotel omnibuses at their appearance, for the Italians have found that the English will turn up everywhere; but to-day they were certainly the only representatives of their nation.
They reached the church where the festa was to take place. It was sleeping peacefully, brooded over by a delicious, sweet smell of dirt and stale incense. Not a soul was to be seen. But as the party marched indignantly up and down the aisles, another smell comes to join the incense—garlic. A merry, good-humoured little priest appears; it is the friend of the lady cousin.