“Yes,” Tom replied, evidently wishing to hear something more.
“And she said everybody was talking of you, and what a fine-looking couple you were.”
“Yes,” and this time the yes rang out rather sharply, but brought no response from me.
I had told him all I had to tell him of Miss Elliston, and, after waiting a few moments, he began himself:
“Miss Elliston it a very handsome girl, with fine manners and style. She is considered a great catch, I believe. Would you like to see her—that is, enough to call on her with me when you are able? She asked me to bring you, as her time is so fully occupied. Will you go?”
“No, Tom, I’d rather not. I’d do much to please you, but not that. It is her place to call on me, if she cares to know me.”
I said this faintly, and with tears gathering in my eyes, and a horrid feeling of loneliness gathering in my heart.
I was losing Tom sure, and it made me very sad, and made the old life to which I must return seem harder than before. Perhaps it was this, and perhaps it was that I had no vital force with which to rally, no bank to draw from, as the physician said, which kept me an invalid all that winter, with barely strength to walk about my room, and drive occasionally with Tom, who came to see me nearly every day, and who surrounded me with every possible comfort and luxury, even to the providing me with a maid to wait upon me. I protested against this, knowing how hard it would be to go back to my work after so much petting, and said so once to Tom when he was spending the evening with me.
“Go back to your work again! What do you mean?” he asked, and I said:
“Mean just what I say. Take care of myself as soon as I am able, and—and—you are married, as they say you are going to be.”