‘She asks very pertinent questions,’ said Cosmo, getting up from the stool of repentance upon which he had been placed, with something between a smile and a sigh.
‘She always had a great deal of sense, though she is such a child,’ said her mother fondly; ‘but, my darling, you must learn that you really cannot be allowed to meddle with things that don’t concern you. People always know their own affairs best.’
At this moment Anne came back. When the subject of a discussion suddenly enters the place in which it has been going on, it is strange how foolish everybody looks, and what a sense of wrong-doing is generally diffused in the atmosphere. They had been three together to talk, and she was but one. Cosmo, who, whatever he might do, or hesitate to do, had always the sense in him of what was best, the perception of moral beauty and ideal grace which the others wanted, looked at her as she came across the room with such compunctious tenderness in his eyes as the truest lover in existence could not have surpassed. He admired and loved her, it seemed to him, more than he ever did before. And Anne surprised this look of renewed and half-adoring love. It went through and through her like a sudden warm glow of sunshine, enveloping her in sudden warmth and consolation. What a wonderful glory, what a help and encouragement in life, to be loved like that! She smiled at him with the tenderest gratitude. Though there might be things in which he fell below the old ideal Cosmo, to whom all those scraps of letters in her desk had been addressed, still life had great gladness in it which had this Cosmo to fall back upon. She returned to that favourite expression, which sometimes lately she had refrained even from thinking of, and with a glance called him to her, which she had done very little of late. ‘I want your advice about Mr. Loseby’s letter,’ she said. And thus the first result of Rose’s cross-examination was to bring the two closer to each other. They went together into the inner room, where Anne had her writing-table and all her business papers, and where they sat and discussed Mr. Loseby’s plans for the employment of money. ‘I would rather, far rather, do something for the estate with it,’ Anne said. ‘Those cottages! my father would have consented to have them; and Rose always took an interest in them, almost as great an interest as I did. She will be so well off, what does it matter? Comfort to those poor people is of far more importance than a little additional money in the bank, for that is what it comes to—not even money to spend, we have plenty of that.’
‘You do not seem to think that all this should have been for yourself, Anne. Is it possible? It is more than I could have believed.’
‘Dear Cosmo,’ said Anne, apologetically, ‘you know I have never known what it is to be poor. I don’t understand it. I am intellectually convinced, you know, that I am a beggar, and Rose has everything; but otherwise it does not have the slightest effect upon me. I don’t understand it. No, I am not a beggar. I have five hundred a year.’
‘Till that little girl comes of age,’ he said, with an accent of irritation which alarmed Anne. She laid her soft hand upon his to calm him.
‘You like Rose well enough, Cosmo; you have been so kind to her, taking them everywhere. Don’t be angry, it is not her fault.’
‘No, it is my fault,’ he said. ‘I am at the bottom of all the mischief. It is I who have spoiled your life. She has been talking to me, that child, and with the most perfect reason. She says how could I think of marrying Anne if I was so poor? She is quite right, my dearest: how could I think of marrying you, of throwing my shadow across your beautiful, bright, prosperous life?’
‘For that matter,’ said Anne, with a soft laugh, ‘you did not, Cosmo—you only thought of loving me. You are like the father in the “Précieuses Ridicules,” do you remember, who so shocked everybody by coming brutally to marriage at once. That, after all, has not so much to do with it. Scores of people have to wait for years and years. In the meantime the pays de tendre is very sweet; don’t you think so?’ she said, turning to him soft eyes which were swimming in a kind of dew of light, liquid brightness and happiness, like a glow of sunshine in them. What could Cosmo do or say? He protested that it was very sweet, but not enough. That nothing would be enough till he could carry her away to the home which should be hers and his, and where nobody would intermeddle. And Anne was as happy as if her lover, speaking so earnestly, had been transformed at once into the hero and sage, high embodiment of man in all the nobleness of which man is capable, which it was the first necessity of her happiness that he should be.