“There is no hurry,” she pleaded. “You need not decide now.”
“But,” answered Dora, “I have decided now, and he knows my decision.”
“Perhaps after some time—some years?” suggested Mrs. Glynde.
“A great many years,” put in Dora.
“If he asks you again—oh! I know it would be better, dear; better for you in every way. I do not say that you would be quite happy. But it would be a sort of happiness; there would be less unhappiness, because you would have less time to think. I do not say anything about the position and the wealth and such considerations, for they are not of much importance to a good woman.”
“After a great many years,” said Dora, in that calm and judicial voice which fell like ice on her mother's heart, “I will see—if he chooses to wait.”
“Yes, but—” began Mrs. Glynde, but she did not go on. That which she was about to say would scarcely have been appropriate. But so far as the facts were concerned she might just as well have said it. For Dora knew as well as she did that Arthur Agar would not wait. Women are not blind to manifest facts. They know us, my brothers, better than we think. And they are not quite so romantic as we take them to be. Their love is a better thing than ours, because it is more practical and more defined. They do not seek an ideal of their own imagination; but when something approaching to it crosses their path in the flesh they know what they want, and they do not change.
Before the silence was again broken the murmur of voices told them that the church doors had been opened, and presently they discerned a female form crossing the lawn towards the open window. It was Sister Cecilia, walking with that mincing lightness of tread which seems to be the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual superiority over the remainder of womanhood. Good women—those mistaken females who move in an atmosphere of ostentatious good works—usually walk like this. Like this they enter the humble cot with a little soup and a lot of advice. Like this they smilingly step, where angels would fear to tread, upon feelings which they are incapable of understanding.
Mrs. Glynde got quietly up and left the room. As the door closed behind her Sister Cecilia's gently persuasive voice was heard.
“Dora! Dora dear!”