After the wonderful interview by the cairn, where he had shown that, although past the boy-lover period, he was ready to cast all consideration for rank and riches to the winds for her sake, she had estimated him very differently. From his first words of love she shrunk with an agony she could not express, so certain was she that they must mean insult; but when his letter told her the depth and sincerity of his affection, and she listened to the magic of his earnest pleading, she felt bewildered and almost frightened at the ardor of the feeling she had evoked. She could not quite believe him. She trembled at the idea of his hurrying into the irrevocable, which he might afterward regret; and the more she felt her heart inclined to yield, the more resolutely she held to her determination, for both their sakes, to test the reality of his affection.
But when he was gone, when she was left alone with the memory of his persuasive voice—of his bold brown eyes, softened into tenderness—of the passion which glowed through the earnest respect of his manner—whatever of indifference she had felt or assumed in their interview fast faded away, or rather warmed into real interest, and trembling, half-fearful liking. Then the question of his constancy assumed an absorbing importance. The perpetual struggle in her mind to resist the delightful suggestions of hope kept the subject constantly before her; and the bitterest trial she had ever known was the gradual fading away of the hopes that had formed themselves in spite of her, when week after week slipped past and no tidings reached her from Ralph Wilton. Of course he knew that she must leave Brosedale, and must also know that under no circumstances would she take the first step toward the renewal of their intercourse.
Working round this dreary circle of thought, she sat motionless, pencil in hand, too absorbed to notice the entrance of a woman of a certain age, who by her costume evidently aimed at the higher appellation of a lady. She wore a handsome plum-colored silk, a tint which appears to be the especial favorite of publicans' wives and aspiring landladies. Her head—a high, narrow, self-asserting sort of head—was perched on a long, thin neck, and adorned with a scanty screw of hair on the top, secured by a high tortoise-shell comb, while the front tresses were disposed in short, wiry ringlets, painfully suggestive of steel springs, and carefully regulated by ancient contrivances called side-combs. These locks vibrated when she moved; and as her walk was a succession of jerky sinkings and risings, the ringlets had an active time of it. Her features were regular and good, but somewhat neutralized by a faint expression of constantly turning up her nose, which was anything but retroussé, as if in contemptuous indignation at the futile efforts of the world in general to take her in. This personage paused as she was half across the little room, and looked very sharply at its occupant's profile, which was turned to her.
"Anyways, you ain't breaking your heart with hard work," she exclaimed, in a tone which would have been painfully acute but for a slight indistinctness caused by a melancholy gap where pearly front teeth ought to have been.
Ella started at her voice, and a large tear, which some time, unknown to her, had hung upon her eyelashes, fell upon the edge of her paper. She looked at it dismayed; half an inch nearer, and it would have played havoc with her colors. She hastily placed her handkerchief on the fatal spot, and, turning toward the speaker, said, absently: "Working! Yes, Mrs. Kershaw; I am succeeding tolerably with this design; I am quite interested in it."
"And that is the reason you are crying over it—eh?"
"Crying! Oh, no"—smiling a little sadly—"I am not crying."
"Something very like it, then," said Mrs. Kershaw, advancing to the table and looking critically at Ella's work. "It's a queer thing," she remarked, with high-toned candor. "What is it for?"
"Oh, the cover of a book, or—the back of a portfolio."
"Well, I suppose it's my ignorance; but I can't see the beauty of it. Why, there's dozens and dozens of things just like that ready printed in all the shops; and you don't suppose hand-work can hold its own with machine-work? Why don't you paint a house, and a tree, and a cow—something sensible-like—that would set off a nice, handsome frame? I wouldn't mind buying such a picture myself; my first floor is a trifle naked for want of pictures."