“Never, Mr. Baldwin!” said Marion, decisively and remorselessly, with but, to tell the truth, little thought for the time, of the suffering her words were inflicting on an honest, manly heart. She was not her best self just then. Trouble and weary suspense had made her querulous sometimes, and temporarily developed in her the selfishness which, alter all, is to some extent inherent in the best of us. “Never!” she repeated. “How could you have mistaken me so? Can’t you see that I mean what I say about being different from other girls? All that sort of thing is done with for me, altogether and entirely. So please, understand, Mr. Baldwin, that what you were speaking of can never be.”
“If so, then, ‘that sort of thing’ as you call it, Miss Vere, is likewise altogether and entirely over for me,” said Geoffrey, with, for the first time, a shade of bitterness in his voice. “You will not punish me for my wretched presumption by withdrawing from me the amount of friendship, or regard, with which you have hitherto honoured me? It would complicate our relations most uncomfortably were you to do so, for unfortunately we have no choice as to remaining in the position of ward and guardian. Can’t you forgive me, Miss Vere, and forget it, and think of me again as a sort of second Harry? Some day—perhaps before long—you may choose another guardian for yourself, but till then, till the day when that fortunate person takes out or my hands the very little I can do for you, will you not try to feel towards me as you did before I so deplorably forgot myself?
“The day you speak of will never come,” said Marion; and the words, notwithstanding his soreness of heart, fell pleasantly on Geoffrey’s ears. “I tell you I am not like other girls. I am like an old woman, and my heart, if not dead, is dying. There now, I have told you more than I ever told anyone. I will try to forget that you were so silly. Some day you will find some one far nicer than I to make you happy, and I shall be great friends with her. So let us forget all this. Now good-bye”—for by this time they were nearly at the Cross House—“good-bye. Don’t think me unkind.”
Geoffrey smiled kindly—forced himself to do so—as he parted from her. Something in the smile sent a little pang through the girl’s heart, for it was after all a very tender one.
“Have I been unkind?” she asked herself. “Is there more depth in him than I have given him credit for? Can he really be feeling this very much?”
And the misgiving did her good; recalled her a little from the self-absorption in which at this season it appeared as if her nature were about to be swamped.
She could not help thinking a good deal about Geoffrey that evening as she sat with her aunt, busy in repairing for that lady some fine old lace, Miss Tremlett having discovered that the girl’s young eyes and neat hands were skilful at such work. It was a very tiresome occupation, and her head ached long before the task was completed. But she had leisure to think while she worked, a luxury she had learnt to esteem highly of late; for Miss Tremlett was engrossed this evening with a new and most interesting three-volumer fresh from the circulating library behind the post office. And while the elder lady was absorbed by the loves and adventures of imaginary heroes and heroines, the younger one was picturing to herself for the thousandth time the happiness that might have been hers but for the mysterious obstacles that had intervened; from time to time, too, thinking sadly of the new cloud that had overshadowed her life, in the bitter disappointment she, on her side, had been the means of inflicting on another. The reflection took her a little out of herself. Her cry this evening was not merely as it had been for long, “Poor Marion!” It contained also a more unselfish refrain. “Poor Geoffrey!” she said to herself, “I cannot forgive myself for having made him unhappy. As unhappy, perhaps, as Ralph’s strange, cruel silence has made me.”
Some days passed without anything being seen or heard of Mr. Baldwin at the Cross House. Marion began to wonder if really their pleasant friendship was to be at an end, and to reproach herself not a little, not for what she had done—concerning that she not the shadow of a misgiving—but for the way in which she had done it.
These days Geoffrey spent at home in no very happy state of mind. He was furious not with Marion!—but with himself for his own suicidal haste, which truly, as Veronica had warned him, had “spoilt all.” He was more thoroughly miserable than one could have believed possible for so sunny a nature. He dared not even go with the burden of his woes and misdeeds to his sympathising friend and adviser: for would she not truly be more than human did she not turn upon him with the cry more exasperating to bear than were to the “patient man” the many words of his three friends, the reproach we are all so ready to utter, so unwilling to hear—“I told you so.”
But in some respects Miss Veronica was more than human, and when Geoffrey at last mustered sufficient courage to make his grievous confession, she, instead of irritating or depressing him further by undeniably truthful but nevertheless useless reproaches, set to work like a sensible woman as he was, to help the poor fellow to make the best of the affair he had so greatly mismanaged. Possibly, in her inmost heart she was not sorry to be relieved to some extent of the responsibility she had found so weighty; for, though most earnest in her anxiety for Geoffrey’s success she yet, as I have said, felt uncertain as to the precise extent to which she was called upon to work for it.