Winnie was startled, and even a little annoyed by this speech—for it is a fact always to be borne in mind by social critics, that one member of a family may be capable of saying everything that is unpleasant about another, without at the same time being disposed to hear even an echo of his or her own opinion from stranger lips. Winnie was of this way of thinking. She had not taken to her sister, and was quite ready herself to criticise her very severely; but when somebody else did it, the result was very different. “Why should my sister do you an ill turn?” she said.
“Oh!” said young Percival; “it is because you know she knows that I know all about it——”
“All about it!” said Winnie. She was tall already, but she grew two inches taller as she stood and expanded and looked her frightened lover into nothing. “There can be nothing about Mary, Captain Percival, which you and all the world may not know.”
And then the young man saw he had made a wrong move. “I have not been haunting the road for hours to talk about Mrs. Ochterlony,” he said. “She does not like me, and I am frightened for her. Oh, Winnie, you know very well why. You know I would tremble before anybody who might make you think ill of me. It is cruel to pretend you don’t understand.”
And then he took her hand and told her everything—all that she looked for, and perhaps more than all—for there are touches of real eloquence about what a man says when he is really in love (even if he should be no great things in his own person) which transcend as much as they fall short of, the suggestions of a woman’s curious fancy. She had said it for him two or three times in her own mind, and had done it far more elegantly and neatly. But still there was something about the genuine article which had not been in Winnie’s imagination. There were fewer words, but there was a great deal more excitement, though it was much less cleverly expressed. And then, before they knew how, the crisis was over, the dénouement accomplished, and the two sitting side by side as in another world. They were sitting on the trunk of an old beech-tree, with the leaves rustling and the birds twittering over them, and Kirtell running, soft and sweet, hushed in its scanty summer whisper at their feet; all objects familiar, and well-known to them—and yet it was another world. As for Mr. Browning’s poems about the unlived life, and the hearts all shrivelled up for want of a word at the right moment, Winnie most probably would have laughed with youthful disdain had they been suggested to her now. This little world, in which the fallen beech-tree was the throne, and the fairest hopes and imaginations possible to man, crowded about the youthful sovereigns, and paid them obsequious court, was so different from the old world, where Sir Edward at the Hall, and Aunt Agatha in the Cottage, were expecting the young people, that these two, as was not unnatural, forgot all about it, and lingered together, no one interfering with them, or even knowing they were there, for long enough to fill Miss Seton’s tender bosom with wild anxieties and terrors. Winnie had not reached home at the early dinner-hour—a thing which was to Aunt Agatha as if the sun had declined to rise, or the earth (to speak more correctly) refused to perform her proper revolutions. She became so restless, and anxious, and unhappy, that Mary, too, was roused into uneasiness. “It must be only that she is detained somewhere,” said Mrs. Ochterlony. “She never would allow herself to be detained,” cried Aunt Agatha, “and oh, Mary, my darling is unhappy. How can I tell what may have happened?” Thus some people made themselves very wretched about her, while Winnie sat in perfect blessedness, uttering and listening to all manner of heavenly nonsense on the trunk of the fallen tree.
Aunt Agatha’s wretchedness, however, dispersed into thin air the moment she saw Winnie come in at the garden-gate, with Captain Percival in close attendance. Then Miss Seton, with natural penetration, saw in an instant what had happened; felt that it was all natural, and wondered why she had not foreseen this inevitable occurrence. “I might have known,” she said to Mary, who was the only member of the party upon whom this wonderful event had no enlivening effect; and then Aunt Agatha recollected herself, and put on her sad face, and faltered an apology. “Oh, my dear love, I know it must be hard upon you to see it,” she said, apologizing as it were to the widow for the presence of joy.
“I would be a poor soul indeed, if it was hard upon me to see it,” said Mary. “No, Aunt Agatha, I hope I am not so shabby as that. I have had my day. If I look grave, it is for other reasons. I was not thinking of myself.”
“My love! you were always so unselfish,” said Miss Seton. “Are you really anxious about him? See how happy he looks—he cannot be so fond of her as that, and so happy, and yet a deceiver. It is not possible, Mary.”
This was in the afternoon, when they had come out to the lawn with their work, and the two lovers were still together—not staying in one place, as their elders did, but flitting across the line of vision now and then, and, as it were, pervading the atmosphere with a certain flavour of romance and happiness.
“I did not say he was a deceiver—he dared not be a deceiver to Winnie,” said Mrs. Ochterlony; “there may be other sins than that.”