“Will he never, never speak? It will come, some time, I am sure, but will he never dare?”
XVII.
Burnham returned to Shepardtown only to tell his mother that he should go to Lowell immediately. He had accepted the standing offer there, and expected to begin at once.
In vain Salome offered him an increase of salary. And as he was evidently bent on going, she would not urge him to remain in her employ. But both she and Villard could assign but one reason for his sudden determination. Both felt sure that he had offered himself to Marion and that she had refused him.
Intimate as Salome and Marion were, no discussion of love-matters ever entered their conversation. With each, love was too high and sacred a thing to be bruited about, even in a conversation between friends. In their younger days, when Marion had shyly announced her engagement to a young law-student, there had been no silly or sentimental waste of words between them on the subject. And now, perhaps because both women felt the stirrings of a deep passion in their inmost heart, no reference to the subject was ever made.
When Salome went home to lunch, she told Marion of Burnham’s resignation; but beyond a momentary look of blank astonishment Marion’s face gave no sign. And Salome’s feeling for her friend was too deep and too delicate, to ask for what she did not choose to tell voluntarily.
Burnham would have been glad to leave town without risking himself in Marion’s presence again.
He feared to trust himself with her, in the presence of the strange attraction she had held for him. But common courtesy demanded that he should call at the Mansion to leave his good-byes.
Marion heard the news of his resignation with a strange sinking of the heart. Something told her that this was the end of her foolish, happy dream. And although she loyally refused to acknowledge her doubts, the strange presaging which was something more than presentiment lurked in her heart all day, and kept her uneasy and restless. She half expected Burnham to come in and by a few words settle the question of their relations. She even asked herself, how she could best leave Shepardtown if he insisted upon taking her to Lowell.
But he did not come until evening. Then it happened, as events will in this strange world, that she was with her classes at the Hall. Salome was unusually tired that evening and had remained quietly at home. Burnham dropped in about eight o’clock, sat for half an hour with her and Mrs. Soule, and then bade them good-bye, leaving his adieu for Marion. He did not go to the Hall, although she half expected him all through the long evening. The next morning he took an early train for Lowell.