“You said no! Erskine asked you to be his wife, and you refused?” Janet stared in incredulous bewilderment. A spark of indignation shone in her brown eyes. “But why? You care for him. Any girl might be proud to marry Erskine Fanshawe. Why?”
“I can’t tell you. It’s so difficult. His mother—she didn’t want me. She would have hated it. She almost turned me out.”
“His mother! Mrs Fanshawe!” Janet’s voice was full of an ineffable surprise. “You refused Erskine because of her prejudice? But she is always changing; she is the most undependable woman on the face of the earth! She is charming, and I’m fond of her, but I should not take her advice about a pair of gloves. Nothing that she could say would possibly have the slightest influence on my life. She’s irresponsible; she sees entirely from her own standpoint. And Erskine—Erskine is a rock!” She paused, pressing her lips together to still their trembling, and Claire answered with a note of apology in her voice.
“Janet, I know! Don’t think I don’t appreciate him. Wait till you hear how it happened... He followed me to the station; it was the very last moment, just as the train was starting. There was time for only one word, and—I was sore and angry!”
Janet looked at her, a long, searching look.
“It’s curious, but I always knew this would come. When I saw you sitting together at supper that first night, I knew then. All the time I knew it in my heart, but on the surface it seemed ridiculous, for you never met!”
“Never that you did not know, except one time in the park. There was nothing to tell you, Janet; nothing to hide.”
“No. So he said. We talked of you in Scotland, you know, and it was just as I thought—a case of recognising each other at first sight. He said the moment he saw you you seemed different from everyone else, and he hoped and believed that you felt the same. That is how people ought to love; the right way, when both are attached, both feel the same... And it is so rare. Yet you refused!”
“Would you marry a man if his family disapproved?”
“Oh, yes! I should not be marrying the family. I’d be sorry, of course, but I’d make up my mind that in time I’d make them fall in love with me, too. What are you going to do now?”