Miss Sands broke into a brilliant laugh. “For an angel, Miss Lambert hasn’t lost her time on earth! But don’t ask me for advice, Mr. Lawrence; at least not now and here. Come and see me to-morrow, or this evening. Don’t regret having spoken; you may believe at least that the burden of your grief is shared. It was too miserable that at such a time you should be sitting here alone, feeding upon your own heart.”
These seemed to Roger excellent words; they lost nothing on the speaker’s lips. She was indeed extremely beautiful; her face, softened by intelligent pity, was lighted by a gleam of tender irony of his patience. Was he, after all, stupidly patient, ignobly fond? There was in Miss Sands something delightfully rich and mellow. Nora, for an instant, seemed a flighty school-girl. He looked about him, vaguely questioning the empty air, longing for rest, yet dreading forfeiture. He left his place and strolled across the dull-colored turf. At the base of a tree, on its little bed of sparse raw verdure, he suddenly spied the first violet of the year. He stooped and picked it: its mild firm tint was the color of friendship. He brought it back to Miss Sands, who now had risen with her companion and was preparing to return to the carriage. He silently offered her the violet,—a mere pin’s head of bloom; a passionate throb of his heart had told him that this was all he could offer her. She took it with a sober smile; it seemed to grow pale beneath her dark blue eyes. “We shall see you again?” she said.
Roger felt himself blushing to his brows. He had a vision on either hand of an offered cup,—the deep-hued wine of illusion,—the bitter draught of constancy. A certain passionate instinct answered,—an instinct deeper than his wisdom, his reason, his virtue,—deep as his love. “Not now,” he said. “A year hence!”
Miss Sands turned away and stood for a moment as motionless as some sculptured statue of renunciation. Then, passing her arm caressingly round her companion, “Come, dear aunt,” she murmured: “we must go.” This little address to the stone-deaf dame was her single tribute to confusion. Roger walked with the ladies to their carriage and silently helped them to enter it. He noted the affectionate tact with which Miss Sands adjusted her movements to those of her companion. When he lifted his hat, his friend bowed, as he fancied, with an air of redoubled compassion. She had but imagined his prior loss,—she knew his present one! “She would make an excellent wife!” he said, as the carriage rolled away. He stood watching it for some minutes; then, as it wheeled round a turn, he was seized with a deeper, sorer sense of his impotent idleness. He would go to Hubert with his accusation, if not with his appeal.
XI.
Nora, relieved of her hostess’s company, turned the key in her door and went through certain motions mechanically suggestive of her being at rest and satisfied. She unpacked her little bag and repaired her disordered toilet. She took out her inkstand and prepared to write a letter to Miss Murray. But she had not written many words before she lapsed into sombre thought. Now that she had seen George again and judged him, she was coming rapidly to feel that to have exchanged Roger’s care for his care was, for the time, to have paid a scanty compliment to Roger. But she took refuge from this reflection in her letter, and begged for an immediate reply. From time to time, as she wrote, she heard a step in the house, which she supposed to be George’s; it somehow quickened her pen and the ardor of her petition. This was just finished when Mrs. Paul reappeared, bearing a salver charged with tea and toast,—a gracious attention, which Nora was unable to repudiate. The lady took advantage of it to open a conversation. Mrs. Paul’s overtures, as well as her tea and toast, were the result of her close conference with Fenton; but though his instructions had made a very pretty show as he laid them down, they dwindled sensibly in the vivid glare of Nora’s mistrust. Mrs. Paul, nevertheless, seated herself bravely on the bed and rubbed her plump pretty hands like the best little woman in the world. But the more Nora looked at her, the less she liked her. At the end of five minutes she had conceived a horror of her comely stony face, her false smile, her little tulle cap, her artificial ringlets. Mrs. Paul called her my dear, and tried to take her hand; Nora was afraid that, the next thing, she would kiss her. With a defiant flourish, Nora addressed her letter with Miss Murray’s venerated title: “I should like to have this posted, please,” she said.
“Give it to me, my dear; I will attend to it,” said Mrs. Paul; and straightway read the address. “I suppose this is your old schoolmistress. Mr. Fenton told me all about it.” Then, after turning the letter for a moment, “Keep it over a day!”
“Not an hour,” said Nora, with decision, “My time is precious.”
“Why, my dear,” said Mrs. Paul, “we shall be delighted to keep you a month.”