The fellow called her Cara! Was it all settled, then, and beyond hope, in four short weeks? Oh, what a fool Roger had been to allow himself to be kept away!
‘Mr. Roger Burchell—Mr. Meredith—Mr. Edward Meredith,’ said Cara, with a slight evanescent blush. ‘Roger is almost as old a friend at the Hill as you are at the Square. We have all been children together;’ and then there was a pause which poor little Cara, not used to keeping such hostile elements in harmony, did not know how to manage. She asked timidly if he had been at the Hill—if he had seen——?
‘I came direct from the College last night,’ he said; and poor Roger could not keep a little flavour of bitterness out of his tone, as who should say, ‘A pretty fool I was to come at all!’
‘The—College?’ said Oswald, in his half-laughing tone.
‘I mean only the Scientific College, not anything to do with a University,’ said Roger, defiant in spite of himself. ‘I am an engineer—a working man’—and though he said this as a piece of bravado, poor fellow! it is inconceivable how Sundayish, how endimanché, how much like a real working man in unused best raiment, he felt in his frock-coat.
‘Oh, tell me about that!’ said Mrs. Meredith, coming forward; ‘it is just what I want to know. Mr. Roger Burchell, did you say, Cara? I think I used to know your mother. I have seen her with Miss Cherry Beresford? Yes; I thought it must be the same. Do you know I have a particular reason for wishing to hear about your College? One of my friends wants to send his son there if he can get in. Will you tell me about it? I know you want to talk to Cara——’
‘Oh, no; not if she is engaged,’ said Roger, and blushed hot with excessive youthful shame when he had made this foolish speech.
‘She will not be engaged long, for we are going presently,’ said the smiling gracious woman, who began to exercise her usual charm upon the angry lad in spite of himself. She drew a chair near to the spot where he still stood defiant. ‘I shall not keep you long,’ she said; and what could Roger do but sit down, though so much against his will, and allow himself to be questioned?
‘Your friend from the country is impatient of your other friends,’ said Oswald, closing the book which he held out to Cara, and marking the place as he gave it to her. ‘Do you want to get rid of us as much as he does?’
‘He does not want to get rid of anyone, but he does not understand—society,’ said Cara, in the same undertone. Roger could not hear what it was, but he felt sure they were talking of him, though he did his best to listen to Mrs. Meredith’s questions. Then the other one rose, who was not so handsome as Oswald, and went to her other side, completely shutting her out from the eyes of the poor fellow who had come so far, and taken so much trouble to see her. The College—what did he care for the College! about which the soft-voiced stranger was questioning him. He made her vague broken answers, and turned round undisguisedly, poor fellow! to where Cara stood; yet all he could see of her was the skirt of her blue dress from the other side of Edward Meredith, whose head, leaning forward, came between Roger and the girl on whom his heart was set.