“Only think, I have not seen Godfrey for more than four years, and have almost forgotten how he looks,” Gertie said, after welcoming me to the garden, and telling me of the expected guests. “It is queer that I have not seen him, but he never happened to be home when I was,” she continued, as she gathered up the bouquets and went with me to the house, where she began to distribute the flowers, putting the most, I noticed, in Godfrey’s room, and seeming more interested in that than in all the others.
Edith was in her nursery, and when Gertie’s decorations were completed and she came and stood by her, I was struck as I had been more than once before by their resemblance to each other.
They certainly might have been sisters, though Gertie was in her sweet spring-time and Edith in the fulness of her summer. Time had dealt lightly with her, and she looked scarcely older than when she came a bride to Schuyler Hill. She was very happy, too, though I saw she dreaded the coming of the young people from New York. But not for herself. She had reached a height where neither Alice’s haughtiness, nor Julia’s arrogance, nor Miss Rossiter’s insolence, could touch her. She was only anxious for Gertie, who might be treated coldly, if not rudely, by some of the party. And when she remembered the fear which had for so many years influenced every act of her husband toward Gertie, and, looking at the beautiful girl, remembered what Godfrey was, she trembled, notwithstanding the piece of news which she had heard the previous night, and which she communicated to me, with Gertie sitting in the deep window fanning herself with her garden hat, and rubbing the scratch she had received among the roses.
“By the way,” Edith said, “the colonel had a letter from Godfrey last night, and it seems the engagement he has so long desired has at last come about.”
“Whose engagement?” I asked.
“Godfrey’s and Miss Creighton’s.”
“I supposed that was settled long ago.”
“It was by the parents, but not by the parties most interested. Godfrey has never manifested any great degree of fervor, and has rather made light of it, I think; but it is done now, and they will be married as soon as he gets his profession, possibly sooner. The colonel is greatly rejoiced.”
I glanced at Gertie, still rubbing and blowing the scratch on her hand, but if the news of Godfrey’s approaching marriage produced any effect upon her it was not visible. Her bright color was just as bright and her blue eyes just as placid in their expression, unless, indeed, there was a little wonder in them as she looked up quickly and said:
“A newly engaged couple,—won’t that be nice? How do you suppose Mr. Godfrey will act as an engaged man? I always think of him as a boy, and still he must be twenty-four.”