Geoffrey met them at the hall door, and handed them out of the carriage. Marion fancied he looked pale; though he began talking to her young friends as brightly as usual. She felt grateful for their presence, as otherwise their meeting after the scene in the morning could not but have been uncomfortable for both. As it was, however, it was easy to avoid any approach to a tête-à-tête.
“I am glad you have come,” he said, rather stiffly. This was the only approach to a reconciliation that took place between them.
Then followed a hearty welcome from kindly, cheery Lady Anne and the old Squire. It was impossible to resist altogether the genial influence of the whole family, the pleasant atmosphere of goodwill and cordiality pervading the dwelling. Yet even with this, there was mingled for Marion much bitterness.
“Why can’t I be happy and comfortable, like these kind, good people?” she asked herself, as she stood by the bright fire in the pretty morning-room, and, glancing round, took in all the details of the pleasant, home-like scene. The old portraits on the walls, the bookcases with their tempting contents, the furniture with a general air of warmth and colour about it, though sobered down by time and use to the quiet hue which in dull houses looks dingy, in cheerful ones comfortable. The bits of work and newspapers lying about, the fresh, brightly-tinted flowers on the table—the two pretty girls flitting about—all made an attractive picture. Geoffrey seemed to enjoy the pleasant influence: he lay back lazily in his chair, looking up laughingly in Georgie’s face as she passed him, his gold-brown hair and contrasting charm-blue “well-opened” eyes, contrasting charmingly with the little brunette’s darker locks, and quick, sparkling glances. She was only a pretty girl, little Georgie Copley, a merry, robin redbreast sort of a creature, who by no imagination could be idealised into a beautiful or stately woman; yet for one little moment Marion felt a passing pang of jealousy of the happy child.
“Why didn’t he marry her?” she thought to herself; “she would have suited him, and in their commonplace way they would have been happy. I am too old for him, as well as too everything else.”
And with a slight shiver she turned round to the fire. She felt herself like a skeleton at the feast, as her eyes caught the reflection of her face in the mirror above the mantelpiece. Thin and pale and shadowy she looked to herself, with large, unhappy-looking eyes, from which all the lustre and richness seemed to have departed, closely bound round the small, drooping head. “Showy,” in her best days, she never had been; nor had she ever been inclined to do justice to her own personal charms. “I am not ugly,” she had said to herself as a young girl, “but that is about all there is to be said.” Now she would have hesitated to say even as much.
Some one else was watching her just then, as she stood quiet and apart by the fire. Someone who she little thought was thinking of her at all. Some one who, as he chattered merrily to Georgie, was hardly conscious of any other presence than that of the slight, drooping figure at the other end of the room, whose bitter sneering words of the morning were already forgiven, and, if not forgotten, remembered only to add intensity to his yearning tenderness of pity, his deep, enduring, ill-requited love.
Then came the announcement of luncheon, and a general move to the well-covered table in the dining-room.
During the meal, plans for the disposal of the remainder of the day were discussed.
“Captain Ferndale can’t be here much before dinner-time, Georgie,” said her sister. “You don’t intend to stay in all the afternoon, I hope?”