“Dick, I’ve been thinking about Miss Dalrymple.”
“Yes?” He drew his breath.
“Shall you see her again?”
He was conscious of the weakness of his answer.
“Perhaps. I hardly know. She spoke of our meeting at Thorpe—Lord Milborough’s—next month. I may or mayn’t be there.” She took no notice of these carefully expressed doubts.
“Please tell her that I should have liked to have seen her. She mustn’t think that I reproach her—I know it made Hugh happy at the last.”
“Yes,” cried Wareham eagerly. “Thank you, Ella. You can be generous.”
“If he had lived, perhaps I shouldn’t have been,” she said quietly. “But he loved her dearly. I believe it would hurt him if we bore a grudge. You don’t, do you?”
He said “No” with fervour, thinking that our own pre-occupations serve as a thick bandage for the eyes, for once or twice he had suspected Ella of reading his secret. It appeared, however, that she was absolutely unsuspecting. She talked on for some time, and he saw that hers was a strong soul, facing the inevitable undauntedly, and without murmurs, strong enough not to refuse tears, but to control them. He said to her once—“You have learned to live,” to which she answered that one hasn’t got to learn that lesson by oneself. It seemed that she feared for the people in the village, who might lose Firleigh advantages, but she meant to talk to Catherine Oakleigh about them.
“And Reggie is a nice boy,” she went on. “I am not afraid of things by and by.”