“Indeed, it is very comfortable,” said Matilda. “You know how to be comfortable. This is your favourite place, is it not, Marjory? Poor Charlie used to tell me of the bow-window, and how it was made for you.”
“Yes, I was fond of it,” said Marjory.
“Then I hope you will always feel you have a right to it when you come to see me,” said Mrs. Charles. “We shall change some things, no doubt; but you will always be welcome, Marjory. I suppose you are to be married soon. You may think it would hurt my feelings to hear of a wedding, being a widow myself; but I am not so selfish. I am sure I congratulate you; he looks very nice indeed.”
“There is nothing to congratulate me about,” said Marjory.
It was hard upon her to hear the conversation between the sisters which followed, about new curtains and chairs that were necessary. It was not Verna’s fault, who gave piteous, conciliatory looks at the daughter of the house. She bore it all as long as she could, and then she went noiselessly outside upon the cliff. The Spring was very mild that year. This was again a lovely night, with a faint blue sky all sprinkled with stars, and the vague, half-seen sea beneath, which sent up long sighing waves upon the rocks, not loud, but full of pensive moaning. There was a young moon shining, a moon covered with fleecy white clouds like a veil. Through the softened night rose the white rock of the May, with its steady light; and the lighthouse further off which Marjory knew so well, and which had so often turned and thrown a pleasant gleam at her across the broad waters, gleamed out all at once as she strayed round the well-known path. It was, perhaps, only Mrs. Charles’s gracious intimation that she would always be welcome, which roused her to the sense that the time was approaching when she must leave this dear old home. It was not in Marjory’s nature to make a lesser grief into a great one; and she had endured so much, that this additional trouble was not heavy to her, as it would have been in other circumstances. But it gave her a certain sore feeling of pain and loss in the midst of her heavier burdens. It seemed hard to have such a subject thrust all at once, without a moment’s notice, upon her. Her heart felt sore, as if a sudden new thrust had been made at it; sore with a feeling of resentment and impatient vexation. She strayed along the familiar round, the “turn” which she had taken so often, hearing now and then the voices through the half-open window; voices higher pitched and more shrill than any native to this locality. Even that difference of tone seemed somehow unreasonably offensive to her. She chid herself for the foolish feeling; but how could she help it? The moon gleamed softly upon the old Manor-house and on Mr. Charles’s tower; there was a glimmer of half-dying firelight making his windows visible. Had Marjory known that her successor, Verna, had already planned in her mind how to pull all those ruins down!
She had not been thinking of Fanshawe, nor of any one, when he joined her suddenly; her thoughts had been all vague, full of that soreness which was almost a relief from the heavy stupor of her grief. She had seemed to herself, not suffering actively, but stupid in sadness; sad, sad down to the bottom of her heart; a state of mind not without a certain repose in it, which this other sensation of being wounded and injured shot across, now and then, like a thrill of life. But it seemed very natural to her when Fanshawe came to her side, more natural even than if it had been Uncle Charles. He held out his arm, and she took it only half consciously, and with a kind of faint pleasure allowed him to lead her to the edge of the cliff, where the sea-line was visible, with the Isle of May rising well out of the waters, and the twinkling lights along Comlie shore marking out the length of the little town. Her heart was overwhelmed with this profound and gentle sadness; and yet there was a pleasure in it, too.
“Miss Heriot,” said Fanshawe; “I want to have you a little while to myself, to-night. This is no place for me any longer. I must go away.”
“It is no place for any of us,” said Marjory, instinctively adopting him into the number of those who belonged to her. They were so few now.
But he took no advantage of this inference. He took it for granted, simply as she did. Perhaps he pressed her hand a little closer to his side; but if so, the action was involuntary.
“No,” he said, “it is no place for you. This piece of impertinence to-night—”