“Yes. I believe you used to be very intimate with them both,” said Mrs Grove, “and there has hardly been any intercourse since Fanny’s marriage. I have often wondered at and regretted it.”
“Have you?” said Graeme, coldly. “We have had little intercourse with many old friends since then.”
“Oh! yes, I daresay, but the Ruthvens are very different from most of your old friends, and worth the keeping. I must speak to Fanny about it.”
“We saw Miss Elphinstone often during the first winter after her return. That was the winter that Mr Proudfute remembers as so gay,” said Graeme. “Did I ever tell you about the beginning of Rosie’s acquaintance with her, long before that, when she wandered into the garden and saw the gowans?”
“Yes, dear, you told me about it in a letter,” said Mrs Snow.
“I never shall forget the first glimpse I got of that bunch of flowers,” said Graeme, rather hurriedly. “Rose has it yet among her treasures. She must show it you.”
But Mrs Grove did not care to hear about Rosie’s flowers just then, and rather perversely, as Graeme thought, reverted to the falling away of their old intimacy with the Ruthvens, and to wonder at its cause; and there was something in her tone that made Mrs Snow turn grave, astonished eyes upon her, and helped Graeme to answer very quietly and coldly to her remark:
“I can easily see how marriage would do something towards estranging such warm friends, when only one of the parties are interested; but you were very intimate with Mr Ruthven, as well, were you not?”
“Oh! yes; more so than with Miss Elphinstone. Mr Ruthven is a very old friend of ours. We came over in the same ship together.”
“I mind him well,” interposed Mrs Snow; “a kindly, well-intentioned lad he seemed to be. Miss Rose, my dear, I doubt you shouldna be sitting there, on the grass, with the dew falling, nor Mrs Arthur, either.”