To me she was very polite and affable, and I remembered what Tom had said of her sweet graciousness to those whom she thought her equals. I was that now, and she said something about seeing much of me when I returned to England; but she has not, and we shall never be more than mere calling acquaintances, with occasionally a dinner or a lunch.
Lady Darinda gave the promised party, and I wore white satin and pearls, and the white boots Tom bought with the dozen, and Archie’s solitaire, too, for Tom told me about it one night at Giessbach, where we spent two delightful weeks, wandering through the woods and up and down the falls to the shores of the lake.
“I did not wish to see it on your finger then,” he said, “when you were so sick and I feared you might die; but now that you have the wedding ring and are absolutely mine, I do not care, and you can wear it if you choose.”
I did choose, for I had a weakness for diamonds, and this was a superb one, handsomer even than the one Tom gave me, which chagrined him, I think, a little.
The party was a great success, so far as numbers, and dress, and music, and titled people were concerned; and I was, I believe, considered a success, too, especially after it was generally known that I came near being Lady Cleaver of Briarton Lodge, and that Tom was one of the Gordons, with heaps of money and the prettiest place in St. John’s Wood. For myself, I did not like the party at all, and felt tired, and bored, and glad when it was over and I could come back to the beautiful home where I have been so happy since the day Tom brought me here as his bride.
It is wife now. The bridal festivities are all in the past; the bridal dress worn at Lady Darinda’s party is yellowed by time, and on the terrace in front of the bow window where I am writing two children are playing—my sweet, blue-eyed Nellie of six, and my brave, sturdy boy of four, with light brown hair and a freck on his nose, just where Tom’s used to be when he, too, was a boy. We called him Archie, to please the dear old lady, whom I have learned to love so much, and who divides her time about equally between Lady Darinda and myself. The children call her grandma, and I heard Archie explaining to the gardener’s son, the other day, that she was really his grandmother, because she was the mother of his first father!
To me the past seems all a dream, and when I look about me upon my home, and hear the voices of my children shouting on the lawn, and see their father coming up the walk, and know that he will soon be at my side, bending over me in the old, teasing, loving way, I cannot realize that I am she who once plodded so drearily through the London fog and rain, hunting for work with which to get my daily bread. God has been very good to me, and, though I have known much of poverty and sorrow, it is over now, and in all the United Kingdom there is not a happier home than mine, or a happier pair, I am sure, than Tom and I—and so this quiet story of real English life is done.
THE END.
KITTY CRAIG
