“I don’t know that I shall go down,” she said. “I must put away all these things, and I wanted you to help me to fold these dresses, Mary. But mother will be vexed if one of us does not go. Josey, send Alexa up to help me—tell mother Mary is just coming, but that I am very busy.”
“I’ll tell Captain Beverley so,” said Josephine, maliciously.
Mary said nothing, but set to work at folding the dresses, and Lilias assisting her, they were all carefully disposed of before Alexa made her appearance.
“Now, Lilias, be sensible, and come down with me,” said the younger sister. “He has walked all the way from Romary, you hear, and I think its very nice of him. He hardly expected to be able to see us again before the ball, and it looks like affectation not to give him a cordial reception.”
But still Lilias hesitated.
“It isn’t affectation,” she said at last, “but—Mary,” she went on, suddenly breaking off her sentence, “I think it is horrid to talk of such things before there is actually anything to talk of, but to you I don’t mind. I cannot understand Captain Beverley quite; that is why I said I was not sure that I should go down. I don’t understand why—why he has never yet said anything definite. He has been on the verge of it a dozen times at least, and then he has seemed to hesitate.”
Mary looked at her sister anxiously.
“Perhaps he is not sure of you,” she said. “You know, Lilias, what a way you have of turning things into jest very often.”
Lilias shook her head. “No,” she said, “it isn’t that. He knows,” she hesitated, and again her fair face grew rosy, “he knows I like him. No, it is as if there were, some difficulty on his side—his friends perhaps.”
“It can’t be that,” said Mary, decidedly. “He has no parents, no very near friends. He must be free to act for himself, Lilias. I think too highly of him to doubt it, for it has been all so entirely his own doing—from the very first—and if he were in any way not free, it would have been shameful;” her face darkened, and a look came into her eyes which told that Mary Western would not be one to stand by silently and see another wronged, whatever powers of endurance she might have on her own account. But it cleared off again quickly, and she smiled at her sister re-assuringly.