Therefore it was not in this straightforward young man to understand all the commotion which was in poor little Effie’s mind when she avoided him, cast down her eyes not to meet his, and made the shortest answers to the few remarks he ventured to address to her. It hurt him that she should be so distant, making him wonder whether she thought so little of him as to suppose that he would give her any annoyance, say anything or even look anything to disturb her mind.
How little she knew him! but not so little as he knew her. They met this day, as fate would have it, at the gate of Rosebank, and were obliged to stop and talk for a minute, and even to walk along with each other for the few steps during which their road lay in the same direction. They did not know what to say to each other; he because he knew his mind so well, she because she knew hers so imperfectly, and felt her position so much.
Effie was in so strange a condition that it seemed to her she would like to tell Ronald everything: how she was going to marry Fred she could not tell why—because she had not liked to give him pain by refusing him, because she seemed not to be able to do anything else. She did not know why she wanted to tell this to Ronald, which she would not have done to anyone else. There seemed to be some reason why he should know the real state of affairs, a sort of apology to make, an explanation—she could not tell what.
But when they stood face to face, neither Ronald nor she could find anything to say. He gave the report of Miss Dempster that she was a little better; that was the bulletin which by tacit agreement was always given—she was a little better, but still a great invalid. When that subject was exhausted, they took refuge in Eric. When was he expected? though the consciousness in both their minds that it was for the wedding he was coming, was a sad obstacle to speech.
“He is expected in three weeks. He is starting, I suppose, now,” Effie said.
“Yes, he must be starting now——” And then they both paused, with the strongest realization of the scene that would ensue. Effie saw herself a bride far more clearly at that moment through the eyes, so to speak, of Ronald, than she ever had through those of the man who was to be her husband.
“I think I shall go back with him when he goes,” said Ronald, “if I don’t start before.”
“Are you going back?”
He smiled as if it had been very ridiculous to ask him such a question.
“What else,” he said—there seemed a sort of sad scorn in the inquiry—“What else is left for me to do?” Perhaps he would have liked to put it more strongly—What else have you left me to do?