They might only be friends, but somehow Blanche gave the silent watcher the bitter conviction that she was certainly something more.
Mary knew that Colville had denied being engaged to Blanche, and ridiculed the rumour as Mrs. Wodrow's gossip. True—but he might be engaged to her now.
'If he still cares for me,' she thought, 'what a different answer would I give him now. If not engaged, why are they thus together, and why does she give him these conscious and confident glances? Was he deceiving me at—at Birkwoodbrae?'
When Mary had taken her seat in that pew, she felt a sense of awful loneliness; but she felt many, many degrees more lonely now. She felt also far, far removed from him, and those whom he accompanied, in her homely life and sordid surroundings at Paddington. A vast gulf seemed thereby to have opened between her and Colville, such as did not exist at Birkwoodbrae; and she thought of the day when they fished together in the May, and other days of delicious walks and rambles under the drooping birches by the sparkling linn, or among the scented pine woods that were overlooked by the lovely green hills, amid the bright sunshine and the odour of the purple heather—of thoughts that came and went—of hopes that dawned, and of words that were uttered, or left unuttered. At last the service was over, and the few people who assembled to hear it—many of them strangers only come to view the church from curiosity—were hastening away.
As Mary rose, Colville did so too that she might pass him.
Still there was no recognition on his part; his eyes were on Blanche Galloway, and Mary quickly glided out of the church. The rain was beginning to fall in the chill October evening, and drawing her shawl close about her she set out on her way homeward, feeling that she would be thankful for a seat in an omnibus.
When she looked back, with an impulse she could not resist, she saw Colville come forth with Blanche, the other two ladies following, as if the arrangement was a tacit one. They all entered the stately Dunkeld carriage, the driver and servants of which wore ample fur tippets. The door was closed with a bang, and they drove off, passing Mary on the way, and bestowing on her a few spots of mud.
'To be so near—and yet so far!' she thought, with a greater bitterness of heart than she ever thought to feel—she was usually so resigned and sweetly patient; but she seemed to know the worst now, and that all was over at last.
The very circumstance of her having to wander alone and unescorted through the streets of London on such an evening seemed to impress upon her still more the difference of position, and the gulf that lay between her and those she had seen whirling away, as she doubted not, to No. 60, Park Lane.
That she had been recognised by some one there on the night of the ball, she thought she had mortifying proof when next she presented herself before the hitherto friendly proprietors of the music-shop in quest of pupils or some employment.