“And yet you are compelled to answer these ‘instructive epistles’ the moment they arrive, and he cannot wait patiently to receive your so dull replies. That has only one meaning, my dear, and it will come when he returns home in a few years, and your children are grown up and able to be left. It will come. I am sure it will come!”
“If it is the right thing for me—if it is God’s will—yes! it will come, and meanwhile I am very happy. It is good of Him to have given me such a hope in my life,” said Bridgie simply; and Mademoiselle’s eyes dimmed with sudden tears. Her own nervous, restless spirit was for ever kicking against the pricks, but she was at least honest enough to acknowledge her shortcomings, and the example of this young girl filled her with shame and a humble desire to follow in her footsteps.
“And I am thankful that He has let me know you. You do me good, chérie. I wish to be more like you,” she said humbly; and Bridgie opened her great eyes in bewilderment.
“Like me!” she echoed incredulously. “My dear!” The dimple dipped again, and she slipped her hand through Mademoiselle’s arm and shook her in playful remonstrance. “Don’t you make fun of your hostess, or she’ll starve you for your pains. The very idea of clever, accomplished You wanting to be like blundering Irish Me!”
Chapter Twenty Two.
“To See the Ruins!”
“This begins to grow exciting. The plot develops!” said Mademoiselle gaily to herself, when the fifth day of the last week in the year was reached, and Mr Geoffrey Hilliard made his fifth appearance on the scene in transparently accidental-on-purpose manner. On the first day he had been discovered assiduously pumping up the tyres of a bicycle immediately outside the Castle gates; on the second, he was lounging about the village street with an air of boredom which showed that he had exhausted all the objects of interest long before the O’Shaughnessy party passed by on their morning walk; on the third, he paid a formal call in the afternoon and stayed a good two hours by the clock, for which breach of etiquette he was so much concerned that he was compelled to come again the next day to apologise, and hope the ladies were not fatigued. Bridgie smiled polite reassurements, but Esmeralda lay back in her seat and naughtily yawned, as though in protest against her sister’s words. She affected to conceal her weariness, but it was a transparent pretence, and the young fellow’s eyes twinkled with amusement. Since the moment of their first meeting there had been this pretence of antagonism, this playing at fighting on the girl’s part; but, as Bridgie had foretold, the man seemed to find it rather an encouragement than otherwise, and his smile was never more bright and self-confident than after an exhibition like the present.
“Miss Joan seems to have suffered,” he said boldly. “I feel truly guilty; but won’t you allow me to remedy the mischief? If I might make a suggestion, it’s a perfect winter afternoon, and you promised to show me the remains of that old ruin in your grounds. Don’t you think that half an hour’s walk before tea would freshen you up?”