‘Oh, Joyce!’ cried Greta, with conviction and shame. She added, holding her companion’s arm close, ‘Not that I didn’t want to say it—many and many a time! You were always much better, much higher than I.’
Joyce put her hand upon her friend’s, but shook her head, her cheeks flushed with a transient glow of feeling, her eyes troubled and unconvinced. ‘We’ll say nothing about that. It was all as it ought to be, and natural: anything else would have been out of place both for you and me. But you did not then; and now you would have me in a moment change, and say Miss Greta no more, because I am no longer the schoolmistress, but Colonel Hayward’s daughter. But how can I do that? that would mean a change in me. And there is no change in me.’
Greta did not understand what was in her friend’s face. Joyce no longer looked at her, but away into the blue distance over the river among the tufts and clusters of the soft English trees—looking but seeing not; perceiving only the mists and confusion of a change with which her own will and thoughts had nothing to do, against which she could not help rebelling, though she was compelled to acknowledge that it was all natural, inevitable, not to be resisted. It wounded her native sense of dignity to be thus elevated, to have a position given to her, even in the hearts of her friends, which had not been hers before. Mrs. Bellendean’s kiss, and Greta’s eager affection, what were they to the real Joyce, to whom both had been so kind, so friendly, even tender, but never with this demonstration of equality? If Joyce had been embittered, she would have considered them insults to her old and true self; but she was not bitter. She was only humiliated, strangely wounded, and astray, seeing the necessity of it, and the hardness of it, and only feeling in her heart the absence of any place for her, herself, the true Joyce, who had never changed amid all these strange alterations. She put her hand upon that which was trembling yet clinging fast to her arm, and softly patted it, with something of the feeling of the elder to the younger, the superior to the inferior—which was a change too, though Joyce was scarcely cognisant of it; for in her unawakened days she had looked up with genuine faith to Miss Greta, making a little ideal of her. Now, though Joyce did not know it, that balance had turned too, and she was keenly perceiving, pardoning, excusing that in which her ideal had failed. ‘I could have wished,’ she said, ‘you had not done it. I could have wished that we should bide—as we always were—just you, and me.’
‘Oh, Joyce!’ faltered Greta, clinging more and more. ‘I have been so glad that you and I could be like sisters—as I have always felt.’
‘You and—Colonel’s Hayward’s daughter, Miss Greta,’ she said.
By this time the two elder ladies had followed to the water’s edge, and stood looking up the Thames at the sweeping willows, and the spot, which none of them cared the least about, where the poet’s villa had been planted. Mrs. Bellendean, who was very quick in observation, saw that Greta was disturbed, and came up, laying her hand on Joyce’s shoulder. ‘Let me have her a little now,’ she said. ‘Norman told us about your river-side, Joyce, and how you had showed him everything. He could talk of nothing else when he came back.’
‘It was a beautiful day—which was all that is wanted; for you see yourself there is not much to show.’
‘And you,’ said Mrs. Bellendean, ‘who were the first thing to be taken into consideration, perhaps. Joyce, I want to speak to you, my dear. Your—yes, I know, she is not your mother; but she wants to be as kind as you will let her. She is troubled about all this story being known.’
‘All what story?’ said Joyce, with a catching of her breath.
‘Oh, my dear, you know. And I don’t wonder at it. You were a miracle in your own—I mean in that position. But now it is very natural your parents should wish—no more to be said about it than is necessary. Mrs. Hayward says very truly that it is better a girl shouldn’t be talked about, even when it is all to her credit. She wanted to warn me,’ Mrs. Bellendean said, with a smile at the ignorance thus manifested. She had put her arm into that of Joyce, and led her along the velvet turf, as far as the lawn extended, leaving Greta with Mrs. Hayward. ‘As if I were likely to betray you! But I want you to promise, Joyce, that you won’t—betray yourself, which is far more likely.’