‘Making fun of her! did not I tell you she had made me serious, pious even? You are a little infidel. But, Cara, look here, I am not joking now. You don’t think very much of me, I know; but there is no joke in this; I am going now to try to find out who she is, and all about her, and then I shall make my mother go, or someone. I did not mean any harm in laughing. Nobody thinks seriously of such affairs; and don’t you see we have a secret between us now, we have a link—we are not like strangers. But, as for being serious—if she is not my wife in three months——?’
‘In three months!’ cried Cara, astounded by his boldness.
‘In less than that. She likes me, Cara. I can see it in her pretty eyes, though she will never look at me if she can help it. You are a horrid little cold-hearted wretch and mock me, but most people do like me,’ said the young man with a laugh of happy vanity in which just enough half-modesty was mingled to make it inoffensive; ‘everybody I may say but you. Oh, I am serious; serious as a judge. In three months; but for heaven’s sake not a word about it, not a syllable to my mother, or anyone!’
‘I am not a telltale,’ said Cara; ‘and I am very glad to see that you can be serious sometimes,’ she added with a sigh.
He looked up alarmed. The first idea, indeed, that crossed Oswald’s mind was that Cara, though she had borne it so well, was now giving in a little, and feeling the bitterness of losing him; which was an idea slightly embarrassing but agreeable, for it did not occur to him in the first place as it might to some men that such an occurrence would be humbling and painful to Cara if pleasant and flattering to himself. ‘What is the matter?’ he asked, looking at her curiously. ‘You are not so cheerful as usual.’
‘Oh, Oswald!’ she said, with the tears coming to her eyes. ‘Papa is going away again! I don’t know why. I don’t even know where he is going. It appears that he cannot make himself comfortable at home as he once thought, and the house is to be shut up, and I am going back to the Hill with Aunt Cherry. It is ungrateful—horribly ungrateful of me to be sorry—but I am, I cannot help it. I thought that papa would have settled and stayed at home, and now all that is over.’
‘Ah!’ said Oswald. ‘So! I did not think it would be so serious; it is about my mother, I suppose.’
‘About your mother!’
‘Yes. People have interfered; they say he is not to come to see her every day as he has been in the habit of doing. It is supposed not to be liked by the governor out in India. It is all the absurdest nonsense. The governor out in India is as indifferent as I am, Cara—you may take my word for that—and only a set of busybodies are to blame. But I am very sorry if it is going to bother you.’
Cara did not make any answer. A flush of visionary shame came over her face. What did it mean? Such questions pain the delicate half-consciousness of a girl that there are matters in the world not fit for her discussion, beyond anything that elder minds can conceive. The suggestion of these hurts her, as elder and stouter fibres are incapable of being hurt, and this all the more when the parties involved are any way connected with herself. That there could be any question of the nature of her father’s regard for any woman, much less for Mrs. Meredith, a woman whom she knew and loved, cut Cara like a knife. Her very soul shrank within her. She changed the subject eagerly—