“Well? Yes, I think I do.”
“Geneviève was beside me at the time. When I turned round to speak to her, she would not answer me. Then all of a sudden she muttered something about wishing she had never come here. And when you went away, and I asked her what was the matter, she began to cry, and accused me of unkindness and selfishness and all sorts of things. She was just offended at not being made first in everything. And I have tried to make her happy, Trevor.”
“She is a spoilt child,” said Trevor carelessly, “but you need not trouble yourself so much about her. When we are married, Cicely, and she has it all to herself at Greystone, she will be all right, you will see.”
“Then you do think she dislikes me, Trevor?” said Cicely quickly. “That is the feeling I don’t understand. She almost seems—I don’t like saying so—but she almost seems jealous of me.”
Trevor laughed, but his laugh was not hearty.
“Really, Cicely, you must not take things up so seriously,” he said. His tone was not unkind this time, however. They were close to the Abbey grounds, and Trevor stopped as if about to turn back.
“I must go home again now, I think,” he said. “Good-bye, Cicely. You will give me the first dance to-morrow, and half-a-dozen others, even if Mademoiselle Geneviève is offended, won’t you?”
Cicely smiled. “I think I can brave her displeasure,” she said. “Good night, Trevor; you won’t come in?”
“I can’t,” he replied. “My mother begged me to come back soon. Miss Winter and I will be kept at work all the evening, I expect, for my mother is never satisfied with anything till it has been undone and then put back again as it was originally. Good night.”
He strode away. Cicely stood watching him for a minute, then taking the key from her pocket, she unlocked the little door near which she was standing, and passed through into the park. How many times she had done so in her life; how far from her thoughts it was just then that this might be the last time she would pass through that little old doorway; how seldom any of us think that to even the commonest and most familiar actions of our daily lives there must come a “last time!” A last time in many cases not known to be such, till looked back upon from the other side of some sudden crisis in life, or sometimes, it must be, from the farther shore of the dark river itself. And it is well that it should be so. We could make no progress in our journey were we constantly to realise the infinite pathos attending every step; we should sink fainting by the way did we suspect the mines of tragic possibilities over which we are ever treading.