“I think I can,” she replied. “I am older in some ways than you imagine. Good-bye, Mr Dunstan,” she went on. “I am glad you are going away, for I hate to feel myself ungrateful, and yet, what could I do? Good-bye.”
She held out her hand.
“Good-bye, then,” he repeated, and in another moment he was gone.
She was wanted indoors, Blanche knew. A quarter of an hour before, she had felt almost feverishly anxious for Mr Dunstan to leave, for she was much interested in the important order they had unexpectedly received. Nevertheless, when she had seen the young man’s figure disappear into the house, she turned again and slowly retraced her footsteps along the gravel walk to the farther end of the garden, feeling that for a few minutes she must be alone.
Every sensation seemed absorbed for the time in an intense, overpowering rush of pity for the disappointment she felt she had inflicted.
“I wonder if all girls feel like this when this sort of thing happens,” she said to herself. “If so, I pity them; it is quite horrible. I feel as if I had been so terribly unkind and ungrateful. But how could I have guessed that such a thing was in his mind! It seems too extraordinary. And why should he have thought of me, among the crowds of girls he must meet?”
She went on musing to herself a little longer. Then, though not without some amount of effort, she made her way slowly back to the house.
“I will not tell mamma,” she decided. “I don’t think it would be wrong not to do so, and though she is so good and unworldly, she might feel, considering everything, a little disappointed that I had been so decided about it.”
Five minutes later she was in the middle of a discussion as to the prettiest shade of blue for Miss Levett’s bridesmaids’ hats.
The next few weeks passed, on the whole, quickly; for though it was what Miss Halliday described as “between the seasons,” the good woman had never, even in her palmiest days, been so busy. She was overflowing with delight; her most sanguine dreams bade fair to be realised.