But Marion laid her hand on his arm.
“I should like to ride with you Mr. Baldwin, very much, if you will be troubled with me. But I don’t want to make any new acquaintances. I know it seems very fanciful and unreasonable, but I don’t feel as if I had spirits for it. Let me ride alone with you, please.”
“You shall if you like, Miss Vere,” he replied, “but you couldn’t very well come to a meet unless you knew some of the other ladies. It wouldn’t be comfortable for you. I’ll tell you how we’ll do. I’ll have Bessie tried for you, and you shall have a few rides quietly me first, and then, if you like it, I’ll arrange for the Copley girls to ask you to join their party to the next meet at a convenient distance. You won’t object to this? Riding will do you good, I know, and if you ride I shall not be satisfied unless you come to see the meets. What do you say to this?”
“That you are too good to me, Mr. Baldwin, and I should be shamefully ungrateful if I did not do whatever you wish. I shall look out my habit today. I expect it will be much too big for me, I have got so thin,” she said lightly. Geoffrey looked at the hand she had laid in his. It was indeed white and wasted.
“My darling!” he whispered under his breath, so low that she had no suspicion of the inaudible words.
Then he dropped it gently, and looking up, said cheerfully,
“All right then. You may expect to see me some day with Bessie all ready for you. Goodbye, and do try to get some more colour in your cheeks by the next time I see you. Guardians are allowed to make rude remarks, you know,” he added, laughingly; “it’s it all for their wards’ good.”
And with another shake of her hand he left her.
“How very kind he is,” thought Marion. “I wonder—I wonder, if it could possibly do any good for me to tell him all about it. But no,” she decided, on thinking it over. She had done as much as seemed to her right and fitting. More would be undignified and unmaidenly. And then she was so utterly in the dark. What might not have occurred since she left Altes? Ralph could not be dead; of that she was certain. He could not have died without her knowing it. But a worse thing might have come to pass. At this very moment, for all she knew to the contrary, he might be already the husband of another woman.
“Though not in heart,” she said to herself. “He was not the man to love twice. Not at least so quickly. And never while he lives will he love another as he loved me. In this at least he is mine.”