It was more like a sigh than an ejaculation, and Sage’s eyes seemed to contract now with pain.
“I’ve given aunt a good talking to, for she’s more to blame than you. She thinks it a fine thing for the parson’s boy to be coming hanging about here after you, same as Frank did after Rue, and much good came of it. She had the impudence to tell me that he was a gentleman, while Luke Ross was only a tradesman’s son. As if that had anything to do with it. ‘Look here,’ I said to her: ‘whenever our girl weds, it shall be to some one with a good income, but he shall be a man.’ Gentleman, indeed! If Cyril Mallow is a gentleman, let my niece marry a man who is nothing of the sort.”
Sage’s eyes closed, and there was a pitiful, pained expression in her face that told of the agony of her heart. So troubled was her countenance that her uncle was moved to pity, and spoke more tenderly.
“I don’t like him well enough for you, my girl, even if there were no Luke Ross in the way. I’ve sent him off to work for thee, like Jacob did for Rachel, and if he’s the man I think him, some day he’ll come back in good feather, ready to ask thee to be his wife, and you’ll neither of you be the worse for a few years’ wait.”
Sage’s eyes remained closed. “I was going to scold thee,” he said, tenderly, “but my anger’s gone, and I’ll say but little more, only tell me this—You don’t care a bit for this young spark of the Rector’s.”
Sage’s face contracted more and more, and the Churchwarden cried, impatiently—“Well, girl, why don’t you answer?” She gazed up in his face with a pleading expression of countenance that startled him, and he placed his hands upon her shoulders, and looked fully in her eyes.
“Why, Sage!” he cried, “you don’t mean—you don’t say that you like him instead of Luke?”
She covered her face with her hands, and burst out into a violent fit of sobbing.
“I don’t know, uncle. I don’t know.”
“Don’t know!” he cried, angrily.