From New York, the day he sailed, he wrote me a note saying that he could not leave without telling me some things which he could not honorably speak of while we were in Richard Chalmers' house that night; and those things were that his own feeling for me would never change; if years passed before I ever felt that I needed him I was to send for him just as confidently as I would to-day. No matter what decision I came to in regard to my marriage with Richard Chalmers he would never approach me again in the light of a lover until I sent for him, the note ran on; and, as I read this last I looked up and smiled into vacancy over the thought of how proud and high-minded he is. He gave me the address of a London hospital and said that if I cared to write to him at any time within the next few weeks the letter would reach him there.
But I did not write to him within the next few weeks.
On the morning after Alfred's departure from Charlotteville I came down-stairs early and found Richard in the breakfast-room. He was smiling radiantly as he looked up and saw me; then he threw aside his morning paper and pulled up a chair close to the fire.
"Evelyn is doing splendidly; the political news is to my liking; there are fresh trout for breakfast, and—here's a rose for your hair, my lady-love," he said, holding out to me a perfect bud of pearly whiteness. A box of them had come on the early train from a friend of Evelyn's in the city, and Richard had purloined the most beautiful one for me.
The ground outside was white and there was the sharp little sound of sleet against the window-pane, but the breakfast-room was a scene of glowing cheer. A Japanese tea-service was on the table, and the trout, which Richard had been fortunate enough to secure from a passing fisherman that morning, was broiled to a most delicious brown and seemed to be enjoying its repose upon its bed of water-cress. A steaming pot of hot water was presently brought in and placed beside my plate, and the tea-ball was brought to me. I was to make the tea and Richard and I were to breakfast together.
"This strikes me as being a happy arrangement," he said, smiling what I had often called his "twenty-one-year-old smile," for when he wore it it was difficult for me to believe that he was as far advanced in the thirties as I knew him to be. "This looks quite married and home-like, doesn't it—Mrs. Chalmers?"
Richard seldom jested about our marriage, and he never, but this one time, made reference to the name which would be mine when we married. Such a jest on the morning before, when he had just come in from his trip and was the personification of gentlemanly grouch, would have made all the world radiant to me; but, as it was, I blushed painfully as he spoke the name—and he took the blush at its face value.
"Ah, madam, I see that the thought pleases you!" he kept on banteringly as my hand trembled a little over the tea-ball. "Perhaps this is my opportunity for pressing my suit—isn't that what they call it in novels? It smacks too much of the tailor shop to suit my taste, however.—But honestly, Ann, I do want us to make arrangements for our marriage the first minute this nomination business is over. What do you say, dear heart?"
Again, if the question had been asked yesterday morning it would have made a startlingly different impression, but, as it was this morning, I parried.
"I say that we are two very selfish and thoughtless young people to be talking about such things while Evelyn is lying up-stairs so ill—and your mother in such distress, Richard," I answered.