“Oh, of course there are sevewal!” admitted Rosalind naïvely, “but just now there is a Special Somebody! Title, estate, family, diamonds, all complete, just the vewy parti mother had hoped for ever since I was born. He has spoken to father alweady, and is going to pwopose to me the first opportunity he gets. I know it quite well. Don’t you always know, Peggy, when they are twying to speak out?”
“Always!” repeated Peggy, with a little gasp of dismay. “That’s too wholesale a word for me, Rosalind! The only experience of the kind I have had happened in India, and I was entirely unprepared, for, as a matter of fact, I cherished a profound aversion for the victim! I didn’t dislike him afterwards, though! I was so grieved for the poor fellow’s distress, so grateful to him for liking me so much, that I felt quite tenderly towards him. It was the most unpleasant experience I have ever had, and I want only one more proposal—one to which I can say, ‘Yes, please!’ and settle down in peace and comfort. Do you care enough for the parti to be able to say, ‘Yes, please!’ to him, Rosalind?”
“I don’t dislike him. He is good-looking, and not nearly so stupid as many of the men one meets. Sometimes I think I could get on with him reasonably well, but at other times I can’t—I weally can’t face it! Then I keep out of his way, and am cold and weserved, and twy to put it off a little longer. But it will come, I know it will! I shall have to face it soon, and I feel as I used to do when I was a child and had a visit to the dentist before me. I twy to forget it, and be happy, but evewy now and then the wemembwance comes back like a sudden pain, and catches my bweath. Oh, Peggy, isn’t it difficult—isn’t it twying? Aren’t you sowwy for me?”
“No!” said Peggy Saville stoutly. “Not a mite!” She lifted her head and looked the other squarely in the face. Her eyes were astonishingly bright, and there was a patch of colour on each cheek. “Pray, why should I be sorry? If you look upon the question as a pure matter of business, I cannot see that you deserve any sympathy. I am sorry for him! He seems to be an extremely good bargain, and it is hard on him to be regarded in the light of a disagreeable necessity. I suppose he is devoted to you, and hopes, poor wretch! that you are going to accept him for himself. For you will accept him, Rosalind! That’s certain. You may imagine that you have not made up your mind, but you have! You could never have the courage to give up all those good things. Why should you, indeed? They mean more to you than anything else. You would never feel any temptation to love a man who was not rich!”
Peggy spoke in crisp, stinging little sentences, her distress on her brother’s account goading her into unusual bitterness; but she was entirely unprepared for the result of her words, stricken dumb by the sight of Rosalind’s pale glance of reproach, the sudden rush of tears to the eyes. Broken words struggled for utterance, but she could only distinguish, “Unjust! Untwue!” before, as Fate would have it, the couple in front wheeled round, and came back to join them.
“I wanted to know which way you would prefer to take—” began Arthur, and then stopped short, horrified at what he beheld. Something that Peggy had said had touched Rosalind on a tender point, for having once broken down, she found it impossible to control her distress, and though she had lowered her parasol so as to form a shield between herself and the passers-by, she made no attempt to hide from Arthur, but stood gazing at him like a lovely, distressed child, with lips a-quiver, and eyes all drowned in tears. He seized her hand with an impulsive gesture, and questioned her rapidly as to the cause of her distress. His voice vibrated with tenderness, and Rosalind clutched his arm with nervous fingers, and stammered pitiful explanations.
“Peggy—oh, so cruel! So unkind! I asked her advice, and she said—she said—such cruel things!”
Arthur cast one glance at his sister, and then appeared unconscious of her presence. A group of visitors was approaching, and his great desire was to take Rosalind into some quiet corner of the grounds, where she could have an opportunity of recovering her self-possession without being observed by curious eyes.
“Come with me!” he said gently. “Come down this path to the end of the shrubbery. If you are in trouble, can’t I help you, Rosie? Won’t you let me try?”
They disappeared from sight, and Peggy walked on in the opposite direction, her face white and set. The iron had entered into her soul, for oh, that glance—that glance of cold anger and reproach! Could it indeed have come from Arthur—Arthur, who never looked at her in anger before—Arthur, between whom and herself there had never hovered a shadow of a cloud in all their happy, loving lives? A stranger had complained of her, and he had accepted the complaint without giving her an opportunity of justifying herself! Another girl in Peggy’s position might have blamed Arthur in return, and regarded herself as a martyr, but that was not Peggy’s way. Far harder to bear than her own smart would have been the necessity of admitting a flaw in her idol. Her one desire was to justify Arthur, and place him beyond the reach of blame. Before she had taken twenty steps forward, she was saying brokenly to herself: