He looked after her,—and his whimsical, indulgent smile brightened his features like a glimpse of the sun. Then he heaved a long sigh.
“That’s over!” he said, soliloquising to the air. “She’ll be all right now! No more sentimentality on my behalf! And I think—yes, I really do think I have told enough lies for one day!”
CHAPTER XX
TIME has a trick of flying when most we wish it to linger, and with Sylvia the three months’ interval between Jack’s return and her wedding day seemed little more than a few moments. She had everything to think of—everything to do—and hardest of all, everything to resign that she had held dear and precious in the simple home life of her maidenhood which had now come to an end. Jack was the tenderest and most devoted of lovers; the knowledge, which had surprised himself, of his father’s great wealth and his own participation in it made no difference in his simple boyish ways, and frank unassuming demeanour, and all he seemed to think about it was that he could give his “rose-lady” the comforts, luxuries and prettinesses of life which she, in his mind, above all other women, deserved. When he set his engagement ring in a star of the purest diamonds on her little white finger and she mildly protested at the evident costliness of the gems, he said fervently—
“What were they ever made for except to shine for you! They are only bits of carbon after all—hardly worth your wearing!”
And, seeing him thus “far gone,” she said no more. But often when the brilliant flash of the jewels on her hand caught her eyes she was conscious of a sadness inexplicable to herself,—the ring was a symbol of the end of one life and the beginning of another—the end of the simple, quiet “monotonous” country life she had led with her father,—and the beginning of a new and strange existence in which wealth would almost enforce social excitements and pleasures for which she had no great avidity.
“I had better have been the wife of an Oxford professor!” she said to herself, once in a little shame-faced way. “Only I’m not clever enough!”
And she took solitary farewell walks round the garden, and daily sat with her “Dad” in his study, moved by a vague sorrow and regret which she could not express without seeming more or less ungrateful to Jack and his father, both of whom vied with each other in “surprise” gifts and plans for her special pleasure. She knew she was a fortunate girl—she ought to consider herself so, as being beloved, honoured and safe for life; and yet—such are the curious contradictions and hesitations of human nature—she was not sure whether it would not have been better for her to be less fortunate,—to be one of those who “welcome each rebuff, that turns earth’s smoothness rough.”
Not even the delightful business of choosing her “trousseau” which she was careful to make as simple and inexpensive as possible, quite charmed away the shadow of depression that now and then clouded her mind.
“I ought really to have married quite a poor man,” she reflected, seriously. “I never dreamed Jack would be rich. I could always manage a simple house and simple ways of living—now if I were the wife of an Oxford professor—” She broke off in her meditations with a little sigh. “Only I never should be clever enough!”