Since the morning after the party he had never mentioned Miss Elliston or referred to her in any way, and his silence was beginning to annoy me, and so I added:
“You are, are you not?”
“Are what?” he asked, with a comical gleam in his eye.
“Are going to be married?” I replied, and he continued:
“Yes, I believe I am, provided the lady will have me. Do you think she will?”
“Have you! Of course she will,” I said, quite vehemently, and felt my whole face burn with excitement.
“And if I do marry,” Tom added, “why should that compel you to return to your teaching, I’d like to know? Wouldn’t you still be my care?”
“No,” I answered, emphatically. “I shall just take care of myself as I did before you came from India. It will not be any harder.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” Tom answered, with a laugh, nor was I so sure of it either, and after he was gone I remember that I cried bitterly over the certainty of his marriage and the change it would bring to me.
During the next three or four weeks I did not see Tom quite as often as usual; he was very busy, he told me; occupied, I supposed, with Miss Elliston, whom I saw with him in the gardens where I was taking an airing in a Bath chair one pleasant morning in April. Mrs. Trevyllan was walking by my side, and first called my attention to them coming straight toward us, and so near that to escape by turning into a by-path was impossible. Tom saw me at the same moment, and I fancied there was a look of annoyance on his face as if the meeting were one he would have avoided. But it was too late now. We were very near each other, and wishing to spare him the necessity of recognition, if possible, I pulled my blue hood closely about my face and pretended to be very much interested in a bed of crocuses; but Tom was not inclined to pass me by, and before I quite knew what I was doing, I had been presented to Miss Elliston, and she was looking at me, and I was looking at her, and each was undoubtedly forming an opinion of the other not altogether complimentary. Mine of her was: Fine-looking, stylish, very stylish, but cold as an iceberg, selfish, smooth and deep, and if it be true that in the case of every married couple there is one who loves and one who permits it, Tom will be the one who loves, and she the passive recipient. I should as soon think of receiving a caress from an iceberg as from that calm, quiet, self-possessed woman. Poor Tom, with his warm, loving heart, and demonstrative nature! This was my opinion of Miss Elliston, while hers of me, I fancy, was something as follows: “That little dowdy, faded old maid, Mr. Gordon’s cousin! and does Lady Fairfax think I’ll ever consent to her living with me as a poor relation?”