If Aurora had been pledged to Bewick, thought Gerald, the most natural thing would have been to tell him of it this evening. In her expatiating upon all she owed to Bewick, Gerald felt a wish to explain how it was that without being engaged to him she could commit the impropriety of publicly weeping over his departure.
It seemed to Gerald rather late in the day for him to seek an excuse to call at the Hermitage; yet on the afternoon following Dr. Bewick’s departure he sought for one–one having reference to Estelle. He took with him a propitiatory little volume containing translations of well-known poems by one Amiel. Estelle was regarded as being immensely interested in French; she daily translated themes back and forth from her own language into that of Molière. These singularly neat and exact productions of Amiel’s should delight–and disarm her.
Gerald did not dislike Estelle, far from it. He did justice to her as a good, true-hearted, self-improving American. Taken by herself, he felt for her decided regard; but taken in connection with Aurora he would sometimes have liked delicately to lift her between finger and thumb and drop her into a well.
When he entered the red-and-green room, the very least bit timidly, with his book in his hand, he perceived almost at once that something unusual was in the air, and the shades of feeling between himself and Estelle became for the moment of no importance.
Nothing was said at first of the cause for Aurora’s air of 367repressed excitement, as she knit on a pink and white baby-jacket, or the cloudy annoyance puckering Estelle’s brow as she stitched on her silk tapestry. The ladies might merely have been quarrelling, thought the visitor, and made himself as far as he could a soothing third, chatting with Estelle about Amiel and with Aurora about young Mrs. Sebastian, whose baby was to rejoice in the little garment half-finished between her hands.
“Gerald,” Aurora interrupted him in the middle of a sentence, letting her hands and work drop in her lap, “something so queer and unpleasant has happened!”
He raised both eyebrows in solicitous participation, and mutely questioned.
“It’s about Charlie Hunt. I never would have imagined–you wouldn’t either.”
“My imagination, dear friend, is more far-reaching in some ways than yours,” he quickly corrected her, “and has had more practice than yours in ways of unpleasantness. But do tell me what it is that has happened.”
“Charlie Hunt! Charlie Hunt!” she repeated, like one unable to make herself believe a thing. “Charlie Hunt to turn nasty like that from one day to the next!”