Nettie returned the money. She dared not keep it, she said, or she would have done so. She should never have a moment’s peace were it in the house, lest it might be discovered. Earnestly, though in few words, she thanked Grace for all her kindness; but “do not write to me again,” she added, “it is too great a risk to run. If ever you are able to help me, I will let you know. I never can doubt you or forget the pleasant days that may come again no more for ever. If I never see you in this world again, remember Gracie I love you far, far, more at last than I did at the first. I did not think I could cry, no matter what came or went; and yet still as I write good-bye, the words are blotted with tears.”
The days went on, and Mrs. Hartley and Grace were planning an autumn tour, with a half-formed intention of lengthening their foreign travel by going on to Rome and wintering in the Eternal City.
To Grace the idea was very pleasant. To Mrs. Hartley the prospect, much as she valued English luxuries and prized home comforts, not disagreeable.
“I should not go unless you were with me,” she said, however, to her visitor; and Grace pressed her hand in reply.
The two women were exactly suited to each other. Mrs. Hartley’s unvarying cheerfulness; her sound common sense; her abundant worldly knowledge; her stores of information;—these things were very good for a young woman like Grace, who was naturally somewhat dreamy and imaginative, and whose experiences of society, of men and women, and manners and morals, were, notwithstanding her feeling that she had been living and learning through centuries, had hitherto been limited to an extremely small circle.
On the other hand, Grace was the very person with whom to live happily. There were no wills and musts in her nature; she had no ways of her own that she insisted upon other people travelling; she was amiable, generous, frank, and gentle-mannered, and, to crown all her other excellences, she was, as Mrs. Hartley said, as good as a picture to look at.
To women whose day, if they ever had one, is over, who have ceased to compete for those prizes of love and admiration which all women are anxious to secure, even though they may not put themselves forward in the struggle, there is something extremely pleasant in the contemplation of a pretty face, and Grace’s face was grateful to Mrs. Hartley’s critical eyes.
“I wonder what John would think of her now,” she often asked herself. “Would he fear to make a second attempt to win her, or dare I hope all may come right in the end. She is the wife for him, he is the husband for her, if they both can only be induced to think so. I must contrive to get him to join us somehow abroad,” which was indeed the secret reason for Mrs. Hartley’s advocacy of the foreign tour and her hesitation on the subject of Rome.
“Rome is a long way off,” she argued, “but we shall see what we shall see; time enough to settle about where we shall winter when the autumn comes.”
Things as regards Grace were in this tranquil state, when one afternoon, while Mrs. Hartley was out on a visiting expedition, from which her guest had begged to be excused, Miss Moffat, seated in a low chair by the window of her own especial sanctum, a small morning room which had been fitted up for and appropriated to her use, took the ‘Times’ that chanced to be lying close to her hand.