“What are you talking about, and who has asked you or any one else to feel anxious about me, or to worry about me in any way?” she asked calmly.
Eira felt that she had made a mistake.
“How vexed Frances would be with me!” she thought. And “I did not say ‘worry,’” she replied meekly; “I said,” but she stopped in time. “Wondering” would have been even worse. She felt herself growing very red, with the consciousness of Betty’s steady, calmly inquiring gaze upon her. “Oh, never mind,” she broke off petulantly, “never mind what I was going to say; I’m a fool, I know. It is much better not to care about anybody or anything. I don’t pretend to be wise and well-balanced and superior and all the rest of it, like you and Frances,” but all she got in return was a quiet little rejoinder.
“I don’t know what is the matter with you this morning, Eira. You are very cross.”
It was too bad, she thought, this “pose” on Betty’s part, when only a few days ago she had burst into tears and not attempted to hide the fact from Eira.
“One’s sister’s love affairs are best left alone,” was the resolution she at last arrived at. All the same, she was restless and uneasy; it was almost unbearable to think of Horace Littlewood at that very moment “cooped up with papa—thinking, perhaps, that Betty is keeping out of his way on purpose, for he must have meant us to know that he was coming, and I feel almost sure there is some understanding between him and Frances about it. And a really nice man, so at least I have always read in novels, is so easily discouraged.” At last she could stand it no longer. She got up from the old stone, where for the last few minutes she had been sitting in silence beside her sister.
“Betty,” she said, “I am going home. Won’t you come too? I don’t want to stay here thinking about dead and gone people, as you do. I am too interested in the living,” though the moment she had blurted out the words she regretted them again.
Betty looked up.
“There is no hurry,” she said, “but you need not stay. I will come soon, and—oh, there is Mr Ferraby,” and she rose from her seat and went towards the old vicar, emerging from his own garden by the little gate between it and the churchyard, while Eira, in a fever of irritation and impatience, made her way home again. Nor was her mood any calmer by the time she had reached her own door, for she had stopped a moment at the gate leading into the Laurel Walk, with a sudden instinct that here might be something to be seen. Nor was she mistaken. Half-way down the path she descried a figure—a familiar figure—that of Horace Littlewood, wending his way, and that—or so it seemed to her—with a dejected air, towards the house. He was too far off for her to have accosted him, nor would she have known what to give as an excuse for so doing.
“It is too bad of Betty,” she said to herself, “playing with a man’s feelings in this way. I do believe she has managed it on purpose, and Frances seems to be aiding and abetting her. I dare say we shall hear that he has gone back to London to-night, and is off to India in disgust.”