Mr. Aston gravely expressed his willingness to hold his hand and see him through. After which Christopher went out to fetch Patricia. He found her sitting on the floor at Renata’s feet, the latter fussing over her with matronly joy and sisterly love, and talking inconsequently between times of Charlotte, with what would appear to an outsider irrelevance of the first order.
“Charlotte will be a most desirable bridesmaid,” Christopher remarked after he had listened a moment, 341 whereupon Renata became greatly confused and Patricia laughed without any embarrassment whatever.
“Charlotte has not yet had time to signify her approval,” she said. “I rely on her judgment to a great extent, you know. If she offers any objection we shall have to reconsider it.”
“I’m not afraid. Charlotte has always approved of me,” asserted Christopher cheerfully.
“Of course Charlotte will be pleased,” put in that young lady’s mother, quite seriously. “What nonsense you are talking, Patricia.”
She got up and offered a transparent excuse to slip away and leave the lovers alone.
Patricia, still kneeling by the fire, leant her head against Christopher.
“I used to try and make up my mind you would marry Charlotte when she grew up,” she said dreamily.
“How ingenious of you. Unfortunately, it was my mind, not yours, that was concerned, and that had been made up when Charlotte was in pinafores. Now come and talk business, dear.”
So at last he told her the news he had been so tardy in delivering, told her the whole story very simply and as impersonally as he could, but Patricia’s heart brimmed over with pity for him. She divined more clearly than the men the strength of his hatred for the burden with which he was threatened, and the burden of past memories in which that hatred had its root. In the fulness of her love she set herself the future task of rooting out the resentment for another’s sorrows, which she knew must be as poison to his generous soul. At length Christopher, having read in her love the confirmation for which he so childishly longed, took her away to be introduced to Cæsar in her new character as his promised wife. She waited for no such introduction whatever, but seated herself on the big hassock by the sofa that was still Christopher’s 342 privileged seat and leant her head against the edge of Cæsar’s cushions, but she failed to find anything to say and Christopher was so occupied in watching her as to forget to speak.