‘Nothing,’ said Anne, softly. She stood with her hands clasped before her, looking with some wistfulness into the blueness of the distant air, as if into the future, shaking her head a little, acknowledging to herself that she could not see into it. ‘Nothing—so far as I know.’
‘Nothing! are you going to be in love, and engaged, and all that, and yet do nothing? I know papa will not consent—mamma told me. She said you would have to give up everything if you married him; and that it would be a good thing for——’
Here Rose paused, gave her head a little shake to banish the foolish words with which she had almost betrayed the confidence of her mother’s communication, and reddened with alarm to think how near she had been to letting it all out.
‘I am not going to——marry,’ said Anne, in spite of herself, a little coldly, though she scarcely knew why, ‘if that is what you want to know.’
‘Then what,’ said Rose, majestically, ‘do you mean to do?’
The elder sister laughed a little. It was at the serious pertinacity of her questioner, who would not take an answer. ‘I never knew you so curious before,’ she said. ‘One does not need to do anything all at once——’
‘But what are you going to do?’ said Rose. ‘I never knew you so dull, Anne. Dear me, there are a great many things to do besides getting married. Has he just gone away for good, and is there an end of it? Or is he coming back again, or going to write to you, or what is going to happen? I know it can’t be going to end like that; or what was the use of it at all?’ the girl said, with some indignation. It was Rose’s office to turn into prose all Anne’s romancings. She stopped short as they were walking, in the heat of indignant reason, and faced her sister, with natural eloquence, as all oratorical talkers do.
‘It is not going to end,’ said Anne, a shade of sternness coming over her face. She did not pause even for a moment, but went on softly with her abstracted look. Many a time before in the same abstraction had she escaped from her sister’s questions; but Rose had never been so persistent as now.
‘If you are not going to do anything, and it is not to end, I wonder what is going to happen,’ said Rose. ‘If it were me, I should know what I was to do.’
They were walking up and down on the green terrace where so many games had been played. It was getting almost too dark for the lime avenue when their talk had begun. The day had faded so far that the red of the geraniums had almost gone out; and light had come into the windows of the drawing-room, and appeared here and there over the house. The season had changed all in a day—a touch of autumn was in the air, and mist hung in all the hollows. The glory of the year was over; or so at least Anne thought.