In the cool twilight, Julia and Kate Daltrey were announced. I was about to withdraw from my mother's room, in conformity with the etiquette established among us, when Julia recalled me in a gentler voice than she had used toward me since the day of my fatal confession.
"Stay, Martin," she said; "what we have to tell concerns you more than any one."
I sat down again by my mother's sofa, and she took my hand between both her own, fondling it in the dusk.
"It is about Olivia," I said, in as cool a tone as I could command.
"Yes," answered Julia; "we have seen her, and we have found out why she has refused you. She is married already."
"She told me so yesterday," I replied.
"Told you so yesterday!" repeated Julia, in an accent of chagrin. "If we had only known that, we might have saved ourselves the passage across to Sark."
"My dear Julia," exclaimed my mother, feverishly, "do tell us all about it, and begin at the beginning."
There was nothing Julia liked so much, or could do so well, as to give a circumstantial account of any thing she had done. She could relate minute details with so much accuracy, without being exactly tedious, that when one was lazy or unoccupied it was pleasant to listen. My mother enjoyed, with all the delight of a woman, the small touches by which Julia embellished her sketches. I resigned myself to hearing a long history, when I was burning to ask one or two questions and have done with the topic.
"To begin at the beginning, then," said Julia, "dear Captain Carey came into town very late last night to talk to us about Martin, and how the girl in Sark had refused him. I was very much astonished, very much indeed! Captain Carey said that he and dear Johanna had come to the conclusion that the girl felt some delicacy, perhaps, because of Martin's engagement to me. We talked it over as friends, and thought of you, dear aunt, and your grief and disappointment, till all at once I made up my mind in a moment. 'I will go over to Sark and see the girl myself,' I said. 'Will you?' said Captain Carey. 'Oh, no, Julia, it will be too much for you.' 'It would have been a few weeks ago,' I said; 'but now I could do any thing to give Aunt Dobrée a moment's happiness.'"