“Oh, yes! I told you so once before. It was of him that I spoke when we were discussing temperaments, and I told you of a man I had just met whose ‘aura’ was so radiantly attractive—that afternoon in the glen.”
“The Happy Land,” he corrected, looking down at her with a smile. “So that was Gloucester, and we agree in our estimate of his character. That’s good! Dear little Jean, I’m so glad of her happiness.”
Vanna laughed, an inexplicable sense of relief sending her spirits racing upwards.
“And I’m so glad that you’re glad. I was so afraid that this would give you pain. I expected—I imagined—I thought you also were in love with Jean.”
His face sobered swiftly.
“And so did I; but it was only imagination. It gave me no pain to hear this news, and if it had, I should deserve no pity. I’ve known her for years; I had my chance, but I never took it; was never even sure that I wanted to take it; was contented to drift. Gloucester carried the camp in fourteen days.” The old shadow of discontent was clouding his face once more; he was seeing in imagination Robert’s face as he looked at Jean, and telling himself drearily: “Love is a gift, as much as other great powers. It is not in every nature to rise to a wonderful, transforming passion. He can, that man. One can read it in his face. He has not frittered away his gift; it was all there, unused, unsullied, waiting for Jean, until she should appear. He has a genius for loving, and like all geniuses he makes his power felt. Jean felt it. It is that that has drawn her to him. To gain Jean in a fortnight, while I, poor weakling, wavered for years, asking myself if I loved her! Love! I don’t understand the meaning of the word. I never shall. It’s the same there as in everything else: I only half-way—never to the end...”
Vanna was doubly relieved to be assured of Piers’s well-being when the family returned to town, and she saw Edith Morton’s suffering behind her gallant assumption of content. Can anything be more pitiful than the position of a woman who loves, and finds herself passed over in favour of a chosen friend? She cannot escape to distant scenes, as a man may do in a similar strait; her pride forbids her to withdraw from accustomed pursuits; day by day, night by night, she must smile while her heart is torn, while her eyes smart with the tears she dare not shed, while her soul cries out for the sympathy she may not ask.
Vanna’s heart ached for Edith during those weeks, when every conversation turned upon preparations for the forthcoming wedding, and the lovers were blissfully engaged in the finding and furnishing of their home; but Jean herself exhibited a curious volte-face.
“We were quite mistaken about Edith,” she informed Vanna casually one day. “Robert and she have been like brother and sister all their lives; there was never any question of sentiment on either side. I can’t think why we imagined anything so foolish.”
Vanna did not reply. She divined, what was indeed the truth, that Jean’s disbelief was the result, not of conviction, but of deliberate intent. She simply did not choose to allow a painful thought to disturb the unclouded sunshine of her day. She was selfish—frankly, openly, designedly selfish, as young things are apt to be to whom love comes before suffering has taught it lessons; to whom it appears a right, a legitimate inheritance, rather than a gift to be received with awe, to be held with trembling.