Chapter Fourteen.
A Young Wife’s Dilemma.
Not another word about herself did Charmion say, but she began at once to make preparations for going abroad, and before a week is over she will be off. She has friends in Italy, it appears, and will probably spend some time near them, but even I am only to have an official address, from which letters are to be forwarded. She warns me that I may hear very seldom, since when a “dark mood” is on, the very essence of a cure seems to be to hide herself in utter solitude.
Well, I also am going to hide, and to shelter myself behind an official address, so I ought not to complain; but all the same I do feel lorn and lone. First Kathie torn away to another continent, and now Charmion, who is so wonderfully dear! The next thing will be that Bridget will announce, some fine morning, that she is going to marry the gardener! I told her so, in a moment of dejection, and she petrified me by replying calmly:—
“Indeed, and he’s been after pestering me to do it since the moment we set foot. There’s a deal worse things I might do!”
“Bridget!” I gasped; and I lay back in my chair. I had spoken in the most absolute unbelief. There were no illusions between Bridget and me, each knew the other’s age to an hour, and Queen Anne herself had not seemed to me more dead to romance than my staid maid. I stared at her broad, worn face, her broad, elderly figure in a petrified surprise.
“Bridget, do you really mean—do you honestly mean that you like him, too?”
She simpered like any bit of a girl.
“And why wouldn’t I be liking him, Miss Evelyn? Isn’t he the fine figure of a man, and as pleasant a way with him as if he’d been Irish himself?”