“You see I have been left in peace lately, and am not consequently in such a high state of discipline as when I was at the Grange. I should have been better prepared if I had guessed that your jealousy would bring you up to town.”
“It was not my jealousy which brought me, Annie, but something which I believe you care about just as little—my love. I got a letter from you yesterday—you seem to have forgotten all about it, or perhaps you wrote it just as a blind—I don’t know—and you said in it you often thought of the Grange, and you supposed by this time I could ride again as well as ever, and had nearly forgotten all about such a trifling thing as a wife. I got the letter at breakfast, and I said to myself, ‘The little jade is trying to pique me! Then she does care about whether I forget her or not!’ And I made up my mind directly I’d come and see you all unexpectedly, and see what you would say. And I didn’t make too sure you would be glad; but, by Jove, I didn’t expect quite such a cool welcome as I got!” And Harry’s voice gave way just as he reached the last words, and he leaned his elbow on the mantel-piece and dropped his head into his hand, with his back to her.
Annie was touched, and she rose, with tears in her eyes, and crept up to him, and took his other hand. But he shook her off, and remained quite unsoftened by her tearful eyes.
“Don’t come and hang about me now, Annie, and speak to me in your cooing voice, when I know you wish me a hundred miles away, or I shall think your caresses were never worth having,” said he, passionately. “And I thought I could trust you; I thought you were so good, so pure! Even when I was jealous, I never thought you would pass yourself off as an unmarried girl, just that you might be made love to by other men—and when you knew all the time how fond I was of you, Annie!”
“Harry, Harry, do listen to me! I am not fond of anybody else—I have not been made love to. Why won’t you believe me? Look at yourself in the glass, and see if you are not more likely to please a woman’s fancy than—than Mr. Cooke—or anybody.”
He had turned to look wistfully and reproachfully down at her, and she had seized the opportunity to fasten herself coaxingly on his arm, and to raise her other hand to his face to try to turn it toward the glass over the mantel-piece.
Harry was not vain, and his own face had no particular attraction for him; he gave a glance at the reflection of the little white fingers which were holding his chin, and then he took her hand gently from his face and looked at her.
“I don’t set up for a beauty-man, and lots of the actors you meet are handsomer than me, I dare say. But it is more than I can understand how you could like an ugly, washed-out, long-nosed, lank-haired hunchback like that fellow I met outside! It is rather hard to be shunted for a man who isn’t even straight!”
Annie winced under the speech; but she said:
“Then how can you be so absurd as to be jealous of a man who stoops—you, who are as straight as an arrow?”