Miss Marjoribanks

by Mrs. Oliphant

"You have something to tell me, Lucilla?" said old Mrs Chiley. "You need not say no, for I can see it in your eyes. And how lucky it is the Colonel is out, and we can have it all to ourselves! Come here and sit by me, and tell me all—every word."

"Dear Mrs Chiley," said Lucilla, "you can always see what one means before one says a word. And it has all happened so suddenly; but the very first thing I thought of doing was to come and tell you."

Mrs Chiley gave her young friend, who was leaning over her, a hug, which was the only answer which could be made to so touching a speech, and drew Lucilla down upon a low chair that had been placed by the side of her sofa. She kept Miss Marjoribanks's hand in her own, and caressed it, and looked at her with satisfaction in every line of her face. After waiting so long, and having so many disappointments, everything was going to turn out so entirely as it ought to do at last.

"I think I know what you are going to tell me, my dear," said Mrs Chiley; "and I am so pleased, Lucilla. I only wonder you did not give me a hint from the very first. You remember I asked you when you came here that snowy evening. I was a hard-hearted old woman, and I dare say you were very vexed; but I am so glad to think that the Colonel never stood out against him, but gave his consent that very day."

This was the moment, if there ever was such a moment, when Lucilla lost courage. Mrs Chiley was so entirely confident as to what was coming, and it was something so different that was really coming; and it was hard upon Miss Marjoribanks to feel that she was about to disappoint everybody's expectations. She had to clear her throat before she spoke—she who was generally so ready for every emergency; and she could not help feeling for the moment as if she was a young girl who had run away with somebody, and deceived all her anxious friends.

"Dear Mrs Chiley, I am afraid I am not going to say what you expected," said Lucilla. "I am very comfortable and happy, and I think it's for the best; and I am so anxious that you should like him; but it is not the person you are thinking of. It is——"

Here the old lady, to Lucilla's surprise, rose up upon her pillows and threw her arms round her, and kissed her over again, and fell a-crying. "I always said how generous you were, Lucilla," cried Mrs Chiley. "I knew it from the first. I was always fond of him, you know; and now that he has been beaten, poor dear, and disappointed, you've gone and made it up to him! Lucilla, other people may say what they like, but it is just what I always expected of you!"

This unlooked-for burst of enthusiasm took Lucilla entirely by surprise. She could not say in reply that Mr Cavendish did not want her to make it up to him; but the fact that this was the only alternative which occurred to Mrs Chiley filled Miss Marjoribanks with a sense of something like positive guilt. She had deceived everybody, and raised false expectations, and how was she to explain herself? It was with humility and embarrassment that she spoke.

"I don't know what you will say when you hear who it really is," she said. "He has been fond of me all this time, though he has been so far away. He went to India because I sent him, and he came back as soon as ever he heard about—what had happened. And what could I do? I could not be so ungrateful or so hard-hearted again, as to send him away?"

"Lucilla, who is it?" said Mrs Chiley, growing pale—for she generally had a little wintry bloom on her cheek like the China roses she was so fond of. "Don't keep me like this in suspense."