“Promise.”
“What is it?”
“If Tr—if he comes here—will you see him for me? Oh, please, please——”
“Why can’t you——?”
“No, no, I can’t, you know I can’t. Why, he looks at me as if I belonged to him—as if he had a right—! And when he does that, when he frowns and looks through you, and waits—and says nothing—I know what he means; and if he said one word, or moved towards me, or beckoned”—She shivered and hid her face. “I simply mustn’t—I daren’t. Oh, Jinny darling, please!”
After a time Jinny promised—but Mary’s peace was broken up. A shadow haunted her outdoors and in.
Mr. Germain drove down to Blackheath to greet his bride. Her shy welcome, with gladness behind, to make it real, charmed him altogether. The family, after a respectful interval, left him the parlour, for which he was grateful. It would have, no doubt, to be explained that in marrying Mary he had no intention of taking charge of her people. Admittedly they were impossible, but it is very odd that he loved the girl of his selection the more for being simply and unaffectedly one of them. He respected her for it, but there was more than that. At the bottom of his heart he knew that if she were to lose sight of her origin, his love would suffer. It was absolutely necessary—he felt it—that she must masquerade for life, be a sweet little bourgeoise playing county lady; but playing it with sincerity, and obediently, doing her best because she was told. The unvoiced conviction lay behind what he now had to say to her. He told her, for instance, that he hoped she would see as much of her family as she pleased, after she was married, though, of course, she would have the duties of her new station to consider and to reconcile with others. He did not suppose, he told her, that it would be reasonable, or even true kindness, to ask them often to Southover. “I esteem your father highly, my dearest. He is in all respects what I should have expected your father to be. Your mother, too, is, I am sure, worthy of your love and gratitude; your sisters seem to me happy and affectionate girls. I doubt, however, if they would be comfortable among our friends at Southover—” Mary here said at once that she was sure they would not.
“They are different from you—quite different. We are quite poor people—you would call us middle-class people, wouldn’t you?”
“I suppose that I should,” he admitted; “but would that hurt you, my love?”
“No, no, not at all. There is no harm in that; and we can’t help it—but——”