“Annie, you are ill! You are so white! You have overexcited yourself. Sit down and let me get you some brandy-and-water.”
“No, no, I am not ill. You were quite right, William; Harry has left me already.”
The young fellow stood before her, shocked, silent.
“Never mind, Annie, you have your old brother,” said he, as soon as he could speak, in a soothing voice. “Perhaps, after all, it was best that he should go soon, before you had got used to him, and might have missed him. Now I have an idea, Annie, that we might be very happy if you and I were to take a cottage—now we are poor, it won’t run to more than a cottage—and you might keep house for me, as lots of sisters do for their brothers; and of course I couldn’t be always at home because of my military duties very soon,” said he, proudly, “but I could be always running down there, even when I was away, and we should be so jolly together.”
“My dear William; what are you thinking about? I am not really your sister, you know, and such an arrangement wouldn’t be thought proper.”
“Annie, I am afraid—I begin to think—you are really fond of Harry.”
“Yes, William,” said poor Annie, while the tears rolled down her cheeks, “I am afraid—I begin to think—I am.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
Annie woke the next morning with a dull, uncomfortable sense of having received a great blow which quite counterbalanced the ecstasy of her first stage-success. She reasoned with herself over this feeling, but could not argue it away. She had indeed suffered two shocks yesterday—the news of George’s ruin and the threatened sale of the Grange in the morning, and the letter which announced her husband’s departure at night. But the first was an event which had long been impending, and George himself could scarcely be more unhappy, now the crash had come, than he had been during those long months when he had felt that ruin was hanging over him; and, as for the last, a week ago there had been no event she had so much dreaded as the possible appearance of her husband in London. It could not be that she was so weak-minded as to have changed in a week from dreading her husband’s presence to desiring it. Certainly Harry had been most surprisingly nice, good-tempered, and kind, quite different from the bear he used to be at the Grange; she had caught herself turning to him for an opinion now and then, led away by the authority he had somehow assumed in his manner toward her; and his replies on such occasions had shown less imbecility than her former contempt for his ignorance had led her to expect. But then this state of things could not have gone on much longer in any case; such a very new phase as Harry’s angelic patience would surely never have lasted more than another day or two, and the reaction would probably have brought on a terrible fit of savagery.
“Yet I wish he had stayed till then,” she thought, regretfully. “He did not seem to have grown tired of being nice to me, and he was so very sweet while it lasted. I don’t think I was ever happier than I was last week, in spite of the fatigue and anxiety of rehearsals. I wonder where he is? I dare say I should be very much disgusted if I knew. After a week of no society but mine, I should think he must be pining for some grooms or coachmen to talk to. Very likely he is enjoying himself in some stable at this minute.”