And thus are comprised her total assets. Till, on a summer holiday at Bournemouth, Sebastian Levi came along. Whereat she surrendered to him her all, including the one feather of which he disapproved, including her faint liking for the bank-clerk, and very certainly including her girl-friend’s fellow, who, on Letty’s return to Turnham Green, was to suffer fatally by comparison with the tall pale-faced auburn-haired Sebastian; suffer even unto extinction.
“... Because a man’s star leads him eventually to places too comfortable for the lean spirit to rejoice in....” Sebastian’s musings on metaphysics were interrupted by Letty, as she swung beside him, where he sat upon the garden-roller. None of the other boarders at the Farme would venture near that especial portion of the grounds; it was known as the “little lovers’ solitude.” “Little lovers” the pair had been nicknamed for their apple-green youth. Twenty-two and nineteen; a swing and a garden-roller; blue sky patching the thick green shade; a girl’s voice, hushed for the very breathlessness of love, speaking of white satin ... myrtle-leaves ... Sebastian ought to have been very happy. Yet for him perfection was already chilled to something less of permanence than yesterday’s warm eternities; and:
“Surely, Letty,” he broke in, “you won’t want all that display and fuss when we marry?”
Her head drooped. It was when Sebastian spoke thus loftily, that her father’s favourite remark: “We’re as good as other folk, my girl, if we like to consider other folk as good as us. And that’s logic,” seemed somehow inadequate. She felt that her lover stooped to her with ineffable condescension, and she hastened to sacrifice to him:
“Would you rather I didn’t wear a white frock, Sebastian? Would you rather I wore pink, or—or something quieter?” and she bade a mute farewell to all pretty silent dreams of herself looking like a picture in the “Lady’s Pictorial”; of the gleaming elaborate gown, to be worn afterwards, shorn of its train, at subscription dances and private parties; then dyed black for more matronly whist-drives; filmy veil that should be lain aside and cherished in lavender and memories, perhaps one day shown to her daughter ... Letty sighed, and swung herself faster and faster yet, breaking through the slanting sun-shafts, that slipped together again in her wake, and were broken anew as the board flew back.
“Would you prefer us to have a quiet wedding, Sebastian? with no presents or bridesmaids or cake? Father said something about grand doings and not minding the expense, but——”
He pulled her from the advancing swing into his arms; the narrow seat dangled back empty of occupant.
“Never mind your father, Letty; he doesn’t understand. Our wedding shall be such a tiny one that there will be only just room in it for you and me and the parson; it shall happen in some grey country church, the sun streaming through its windows like youth reviving in an old heart——”
“I call that beautiful,” interrupted Letty softly.