Oh, he could not intend to hurt her so terribly, to add this insufferably humiliating thing to all that she was enduring now!
“I don’t believe it!” Gabrielle said aloud to the gulls and the sea. “David wouldn’t do it. It wouldn’t be honest, and he would know how mortally—how mortally hurt I would be!”
But the uncomfortable fear persisted. David always entered into Sylvia’s and Aunt Flora’s plans with all the affectionate interest of a devoted son. He knew they were troubled about Gay. He would step into the breach and solve the Gay problem once and for all.
“Oh, my God, I cannot bear it, if he begins to say something like that to me!” Gay said, passionately, getting to her feet and beginning to walk along the rough shore blindly, hardly conscious of what she was doing. “How cruel—how cruel they are! They don’t know, you see,” she added, to herself, more quietly. “They don’t know how hard it is! Aunt Flora will think it over and decide that David would be a most wonderful match for me——”
Her heart began to beat fast again, and her face burned.
“If he comes here next week,” she said, hurriedly and feverishly, “I will not be here! Where can I go? I won’t—I can’t have him tell me about it, that Sylvia thinks it wise, and Aunt Flora thinks it wise. No, my dear David,” Gay said, stumbling on, and crying bitterly as she went, “you are the one man in the world who cannot solve my problems by marrying me! You would do it, to have them happy, and to make me happy, but that would be more than I can bear! I’ve borne a great deal—I wish I had never been born!” And blinded by tears, she sat down upon a rock, and buried her head in her arms, and sobbed aloud.
But when she got home she was quite herself again, and had the puppy in the sitting room before dinner, playing with him charmingly in her low chair; standing him up on his indeterminate little hind legs, in a dancing position, doubling him up with little bites and woofs of affection, to which the struggling puppy made little woofing and biting replies.
Gabrielle had by this time quite convinced herself that it was idiotic to suspect sensible David of anything so fantastic as disposing of Sylvia, whom he so heartily admired, and offering himself to her, whom he had not seen for twelve long weeks. She put the suspicion resolutely from her.
Aunt Flora had softened so much to Ben, as the puppy was called, that he was a regular third in the evening group, and had even been up to Lily’s room. Flora often pretended that Ben could not be comfortable curled up in a ball in an armchair and sound asleep, and would drag him into her lap with an impatient “Here, if you won’t be quiet anywhere else!” To-night Gay forestalled this by surrendering him to Aunt Flora as soon as dinner was over. Neither played cards to-night, Flora thoughtfully pulled the little dog’s soft ears, Gabrielle sat opposite, with Emerson’s Essays open in her lap.
“Poor Lily isn’t going to last much longer, Gabrielle,” Flora said, presently, with a sigh. The relief of sharing her secret had quite visibly softened Flora, and she often discussed Gay’s mother with the girl as with a confidante and an equal. “I think we must have a doctor, now. I know, of course, what he will say; she had constant care from a doctor while she was at Crosswicks. But, afterward, it is as well to have had some advice.”