“It was just someone I met one time when I was visiting, and when he was ordered abroad he asked if he might write while he was away. I was very happy about it, for I had never seen anyone I liked so much, and we wrote to each other regularly for over a year. They were not love-letters; just quite ordinary, sensible, telling-the-news, but there was always one little sentence in his which seemed to say more than the words, and to tell me that he cared a great deal. If a stranger had read it, he would not have understood, but I knew what he meant, and I used to skim over the pages until I came to those few words, and they were the whole letter to me.
“Looking back now I can see how I lived in expectation of mail day, but suddenly his letters stopped. When father was pronounced hopelessly ill, I sent him a hurried note, saying that we should have to leave the Castle, for all the money was gone, and from that day to this I have heard no more. It was very hard coming just then, Sylvia!
“For the first few months I was not really uneasy, though very disappointed. I knew that a soldier’s life is not always his own, and that he might have been ordered to a part of the country where it was impossible to send off letters, but then I read his name as taking part in some function in Bombay, and I knew that could be the case no longer. I would not tell Esmeralda to depress her in the midst of her happiness, so I just sat tight and waited, and the time was very long.
“When it came near mail day my hopes would go up, for it’s my nature to be cheerful. The postman would knock at the door, and my heart would go head over heels with excitement, and it would be a circular, or a bill wanting payment. Another time he would not come at all, and that was worse, for one went on drearily hoping and hoping, and pretending that the clock was fast. Now I forget mail days on purpose, for it is nearly eighteen months since he wrote last, and I have given up all hope of hearing.”
Sylvia drew a deep sigh, and knitted her forehead.
“I can’t believe that anyone could forget you when he had once cared. You are so different from other girls. It is most strange and mysterious. Do you think that perhaps—you won’t mind my suggesting it—the money had some influence with him? Perhaps he thought you were an heiress—at any rate, that your people were rich and influential, and when he heard that you were poor he may have changed.”
“No!” said Bridgie decisively. “No, I won’t think it! I won’t let myself think so badly of anyone for whom I have cared so much. I don’t know what his reasons were, and perhaps I never shall, but I would rather believe the best. Some people don’t find it easy to remember when they are far-away, and he might have a delicacy in writing to say that he had forgotten!
“If I had still been Miss O’Shaughnessy of Knock, I should have sent just one more letter to ask if anything was wrong, but I had too much pride to obtrude myself as Bridgie of nowhere. I have no reason to believe that my letter went astray, and even if it had, he would have written again if he had wished to hear. He is alive and well, I know so much, and I’m well too, and very happy with my boys. I had a bad time of it, and the suspense had more to do with making me ill than the hard work of that summer; but now I have faced the worst, and have far too much to do to be able to mope. Boys are such cheering creatures! They give you so much work. The very darning of their socks is a distraction!”
“It would distract me in a very different way!” said Sylvia, with a smile.