“Is that a chance remark? You women understand one another. Have you seen anything——”
“Nothing I could or would repeat, my dear boy! But there is a mystery somewhere, and I can’t believe it is the phenomenon of such a sensible girl’s failure to appreciate my brother. May I say something, March, dear?”
“Whatever you like—after what has gone before!”
“Maybe it ought not to have gone before—or after, either. For, brother, this is not just the sort of connection that you should form. To speak plainly, you might look higher. ‘Strike—but hear!’ Hetty is all that I have said, and more. But there is a Bohemian flavor about the household. We will whisper it—even at half-past ten o’clock at night, in the orchard—and never hint it to ‘the people,’ or to mamma! They are nomads from first to last—why, I cannot say. They have lived everywhere, and nowhere long. Mrs. Wayt is a refined gentlewoman, but her eyes are sad and anxious. You know how fond I am of Hester, poor child! Still a nameless something clings to them as a whole—not quite a taint, but a tang! Especially to Mr. Wayt. There! it is out! Let us hope the apple trees are discreet! I distrust him, March! He doesn’t ring true. He is always on pose. He is a sanctimonious (which doesn’t mean sanctified) self-lover. Such men ought to remain celibate.”
March tried to laugh, but not successfully.
“I dissent from and agree to nothing you say. But——” He waited so long that May finished the sentence for him.
“But you love Hetty?”
“Yes! She suits me, May! As no other woman ever did. As no other woman ever will. I have tried to reason myself out of the persuasion, but get deeper in. She suits me—every fiber and every impulse of my nature. I seem to have known her forever and always to have missed her.”
With all her pride in her family and ambition for her brother May had a romantic side to her character. Had she liked Hetty less, she would yet have pledged her support to the lover. She told him this while they strolled homeward, and then around and around the graveled drive in front of the Gilchrist portico, and had, in return, the full story of his passion.
“When I marry, my wife will have all there is of me,” he had said, long ago, to his sister.