“Like me!” George exclaimed in great surprise.
“Yes—since I have said it. I did not mean to tell you so. I wish she would marry you after all. You will say that I am capricious and you will laugh at the way in which I have changed my mind. I admit it. I made a mistake. I misjudged you. If it were all to be lived over again, instead of paying no attention to what happened, as I did during the last year, I would make her marry you. It would have been much better. I made a great mistake in letting her alone.”
“I had never expected to hear you say that,” said George, looking into her brown eyes and trying to read her thoughts.
“I am not given to talking about myself, as you may have noticed, but I once told you that my only virtue was honesty. What I think, I say, if there is any need of saying anything. I told you that I never hated you, and it is quite true. I disliked you and I did not want you for a brother-in-law. In the old days, more than a year ago, Constance and I used to quarrel about you. She admired everything you did, and I saw no reason to do so. That was before you published your first book, when you used to write so many articles in the magazines. She thought them all perfection, and I thought some of them were trash and I said so. I daresay you think it is not very complimentary of me to tell you what I think and thought. Perhaps it is not. There is no reason why I should make compliments after what I have said. You have written much that I have liked since, and you have made a name for yourself. My judgment may be worthless, but those who can judge have told me that some things you have done will live. But that is not the reason why I have changed my mind about you. If you were still writing those absurd little notices in the papers, I should think just as well of you, yourself, as I do now. You are not what I thought you were—a clever, rather weak, vain creature without the strength of being enthusiastic, nor the courage to be cynical. That is exactly what I thought. You will forgive me if I tell you so frankly, will you not? I found out that you are strong, brave and honourable. I do not expect that you will ever think again of marrying my sister, but if you do I shall be glad, and if you do not, I shall always be sorry that I did not use all my influence in making Constance accept you. That is a long speech, but every word of it is true, and I am glad I have told you just what I think.”
George was silent for some seconds. There were assuredly many people in the world from whom he would have resented such an exposition of opinion in regard to himself. But Grace was not one of these. He respected her judgment in a way he could not explain, and he felt that all she had said confirmed his own ideas about her character.
“I am glad you have told me,” he answered at length. “I have changed my mind about you, too. I used to feel that you were the opposing barrier between your sister and me, and that but for you we should have been happily married long ago. I hated you accordingly, with a fine unreasoning hatred. You were very frank with me when you came to give me her decision. I believed you at the moment, but when I was out of the house I began to think that you had arranged the whole thing between you, and that you were the moving power. It was natural enough, but my common sense told me that I was wrong within a month of the time. I have liked your frankness, in my heart, all along. It has been the best thing in the whole business.”
“You and I understand each other,” said Grace, leaning back in her seat and watching his dark face from beneath her heavy, drooping lids. “It is strange. I never thought we should, and until lately I never thought it would be pleasant if we did.”
George was struck by the familiarity of her tone. She had always been the person of all others who had treated him with the most distant civility, and whose phrases in speaking with him had been the coldest and the most carefully chosen. He had formerly wondered how her voice would sound if she were suddenly to say something friendly.
“You are very good,” he answered presently. “With regard to the rest—to what you have said about your sister. I have done my best to put the past out of my mind, and I have succeeded. When I met her in the garden just now, I told her what has happened in my life. I am to be married very soon. I did not mean to tell any one but Miss Fearing until it was announced publicly, but I cannot help telling you, after what you have said. I am going to marry my cousin in two months.”
Grace did not change her position nor open her eyes any wider. She had expected to hear the news before long.