“I am sure, sir, I am very sorry. But you looked pretty comfortable sitting there by the fire together.”
“Comfortable! This woman says we looked comfortable,” said Aubrey, turning in amazement to Annie, who hastened to say:
“And so we were, Mrs. Briggs—at least, I was. As for Mr. Cooke, some people are never contented, you know.”
And she ran away laughing to her sitting-room, while Aubrey went up-stairs to his, singing Siebel’s song in “Faust” in a very loud but very melancholy voice.
After that afternoon in Mrs. Briggs’ kitchen, Miss Langton and Mr. Cooke were very good friends. Annie found in him just the same boyish high spirits which had made William such a delightful companion, while the fact of his being well-educated and witty gave him a charm in which the Braithwaites were one and all sadly deficient. So that it gradually came to be a matter of course that he should find out what was worth seeing about each town which the company visited, and that he should then take her to see it, and that, if they were in sentimental mood, they should unite in conjuring up pictures of the olden time in the ruined abbeys and crumbling walls they inspected; while, if they felt inclined to scoff at antiquity, they laughed together. The half-tender tone of deference which gradually grew up in his manner to her did not cause Annie the least uneasiness. She looked upon him as a universal lover, who could not keep sentiment quite out of his intercourse with any woman, and, if any one had told her that Aubrey Cooke was growing seriously in love with her, and that her friendly manner was encouragement, she would have been very much amused at the suggestion.
But Aubrey had in truth grown quite conscious of the fact that this capricious little woman, with her alternate fits of cold shyness and madly high spirits, who could parry his nonsense with nonsense just as wild one moment, and the next hold her own in a serious discussion, had a charm for him which made all other women seem insipid in his eyes. She was lovely to him; even when her little brown face looked colorless and unattractive to others, it was full of pathetic interest to him; when she was looking her best, when the wind had brought the bright hue of health to her cheeks and her eyes were sparkling with fun or easily roused excitement, he could not take his own vacuous light-blue eyes off her face. If his face had been more expressive, she could not have failed to discover that his interest in her was deeper than was safe for his own peace of mind; but unluckily Aubrey’s features were the most perfect mask ever worn by a man whose feelings were in reality as keen as his intellect.
Time after time he had made up his mind that he would propose to her at such a time, at such a place. For it had come to this, that he felt he must make her promise to be his wife, if she would, before this tour was over. But, whenever the moment came which he had looked upon as propitious for the plunge, his heart failed him, or she would be in the wrong mood, too friendly or too satirical, and the question had to be put off. After all, there was no need to hurry matters; there were some weeks of the tour to run yet, and in the meantime their intercourse was delightful, and in the awful possibility of her saying “No” there would be an end of even that.
And there was a burden on his mind which he was anxious to find an opportunity of removing. It concerned Colonel Richardson and the interest Miss Langton took in that handsome Lovelace. He made himself an opportunity rather clumsily. They were reading an epitaph of the usual order on some man who seemed to have had all the virtues, to have been beloved and respected by everybody, and to have made a blank in the universe by his death.
“He was too perfect,” said Aubrey. “I suppose his widow put up this as a salve to her conscience after worrying her husband to death.”
“Well, perhaps she really thought it.”