“Afraid of being with your mother!” exclaimed Geneviève, the blood rushing to her face, “how do you mean, Cicely? Why need I be afraid?”
“I don’t think you need be afraid,” replied her cousin, “I only mean that you may misunderstand mother till you know her better. She says little things sharply sometimes, but she never has any sharp feelings, Geneviève; she has the kindest, gentlest heart in the world. You need never be afraid of her, dear.”
“I know,” said Geneviève gently. “I know she is good, very good, and so are you, Cicely. But I cannot help sometimes being afraid. I am not so good. I am silly and foolish, yet I wish not that you should think me so,” she added naïvely.
She looked up in her cousin’s face as she spoke, and Cicely smiled kindly. Oh, how Geneviève wished she could tell her all about the complication she had got herself into! But, no; it was not to be thought of. After this, however, once clear of the present entanglement, Geneviève resolved she would take care never to involve herself in another; she really felt inclined for the future to make a friend of her cousin, and to appeal to her for advice and counsel.
So Cicely drove off with her mother to Haverstock, and as soon as she was sure that the coast was clear, Geneviève equipped herself for her walk to Greybridge.
She knew the way, as she had been there once with her cousin, and the road was direct. She walked quickly, and reached the little post-office without misadventure of any kind, and having safely posted her letter, she turned with a considerably lightened heart to retrace her steps.
Greybridge was a funny little town. There was a main street, with half-a-dozen tiny short ones leading to nowhere, running out of it on one side. And the great thoroughfare was, of course, called the High Street. There were about a dozen shops in the place, a church in no way remarkable, a melancholy and antiquated inn, which like so many of its kin had been brisk and cheery in the old, old days, when his Majesty’s mail clattered over the stones; and there were two or three genteel little terraces, in which dwelt the doctor, the lawyer, the curate, whoever he might be for the time, and several “genteel ladies, always genteel,” though the patent of their gentility bore date long ago. These ladies, spinsters for the most part, were, as a matter of course, perfectly au fait of the doings and sayings, and thoughts even, of their wealthier neighbours. They knew all about the Methvyn household, the nearest of the adjacent families. They were thoroughly posted up in all the details of little Charlie Forrester’s illness and death, which latter event they had predicted with surprising prevision; they knew far more than either old Dr. Farmer or “the young man from Sothernbay” of the concealed progress made by Colonel Methvyn’s somewhat mysterious disease; they could have related all that took place in the family conclave (which had never assembled) in which it was decided that “Miss Cicely and young Mr. Fawcett were to make a match of it,” and they quite understood Mrs. Methvyn’s reasons for sending for “the little French girl” from unknown parts. So, as all their windows looked out directly upon the High Street, and as the post-office lay at the opposite end of the town from that by which Geneviève entered it from the Abbey Road, it was not to be supposed that Mdlle. Casalis’s progress to and from her destination would be unobserved by the several pairs of eyes ever on the look out for a little harmless excitement.
But Genevieve was as yet happily ignorant of the manners and customs common to little out-of-the-way English country towns, so she made her way to the post office, there deposited her letter, and turned to go home again without misgiving, when suddenly she heard the clattering of a horse’s hoofs upon the cobble-stones with which Greybridge High Street was paved, and looking up, to her surprise, recognised Mr. Fawcett riding slowly down the street in her direction.
Her first sensation was one of pleasure, her second of dismay—he would tell of having seen her—her third, which she arrived at just as the gentleman came within speaking distance, a mixture of the two former; she was pleased, yet frightened to see him; she would take him into her confidence to the extent of begging him not to betray her. So it was an eager yet blushing face which looked up at Mr. Fawcett from under the broad-brimmed straw hat which Geneviève had chosen for her walk in the sun. And as the young man recognised the sweet face, notwithstanding his amazement, its loveliness struck him yet more vividly than heretofore.
“What in the world is she doing here? Is that the way they take care of her? Why, my aunt would as soon think of Cicely’s cooking the dinner as of letting her walk to Greybridge alone!” were his first thoughts. And “I do believe she grows prettier every time I see her,” came next.