“Oh! no,” replied her mother,“he went away in rather low spirits. I told him I feared the idea of leaving us all so very soon would be startling to you, and I asked him to let me speak about it to you first. I am rather sorry for Trevor sometimes.”
“Do you think I don’t consider him enough, mother?” said Cicely anxiously. “I think I do—at least, till quite lately there never seemed to be a cloud between us. But, somehow, Trevor is a little changed. I am sure he is—I don’t understand it. I understand my father’s having grown morbid about it, but I don’t know why Trevor wants to hurry it on so. Mother,” she added, “I will speak to Trevor myself about it. It will be better.”
“Very well,” said her mother. “It is getting late, Cicely, say good-night to me, dear. But, by the bye, I am forgetting something I wanted to speak about to you. Cicely, I think Geneviève should now be told of your engagement. She has been here several weeks, and it may seem strange to her afterwards to have been so long kept in the dark.”
“I almost think she has guessed it—or partly, at least,” said Cicely. “But I am not quite sure. Yes, I think you had better tell her, mamma. If I am really going to be married in six months,” she went on, with a faint smile, “I suppose I shall begin to realise it. Till now it has seemed so indefinite, I could hardly feel as if there were anything to tell—I felt as if Trevor and I should always be just the same to each other as we are now.”
She gave a little sigh, but repeated, “Yes, please, tell Geneviève then, mamma.”
“Geneviève may have confidences of her own some day,” said Mrs. Methvyn; “did you notice how much Mr. Guildford and she seemed to have to say to each other yesterday?”
Cicely looked grave. “I don’t think Geneviève is the kind of girl,” she began—“I mean, I don’t fancy Mr. Guildford is thinking of marrying at all,” she went on. “His head is full of other things.”
“Then he is just the sort of man who will be startled some day by finding he has a heart as well as a head,” observed Mrs. Methvyn oracularly.
“Perhaps,” said Cicely quietly, and then her mother left her.
The idea of Mr. Guildford’s being attracted by her cousin was somehow distasteful to Miss Methvyn; it jarred against the estimate she had unconsciously formed of him. “I thought he was above things of that kind,” she said to herself dissatisfiedly, “and Geneviève is so young and childish. Still,” she went on to reflect, “perhaps, on that very account she would better suit him as a wife.”