A fortnight was gone, since that day when we were engaged, as Alice called it; and in a week, only a week now, the other day was to come.
“You have never told me yet, Miss Hester,” said Alice, as she passed behind me, “where you are going, after—”
I interrupted her hurriedly. I was frightened for a mention of this dreadful ceremony, in so many words; and the idea of going away was enough to overset my composure at any time—I who had never left home before, and such a going away as this!
“We are to go abroad,” I answered hurriedly; “but only for a few weeks, and then to have a house in Cambridgeshire, if we can find one very near at hand, Alice.”
“Yes,” answered Alice.
There was so much implied in this “yes,” it seemed so full of information and consciousness, as if she could tell me more than I told her, that I was annoyed and almost irritated. In the displeasure of the moment I could not continue the conversation; it was very strange what Alice could mean by these inferences, and then to look so much offended when I spoke to her about them. I saw that Harry was still in the garden, looking up, and beckoning to me again, when he saw me look out—so I put away my work, and went down to hear what he had to say.
He had not anything very particular to say; but it was not disagreeable, though there was little originality in it, and I had heard most of it before; and he helped me with some flowers in the green-house which had been sadly neglected, and we cut some of the finest of them in the garden, for the vase upon my little table upstairs; and he told me I ought to wear flowers in my hair, and he said he would bring me a wreath of briony. “I should like to bind the beautiful clustered berries over those brown locks of yours, Hester,” he said. “I will tell you some day how I came to know the briony first, and fell in love with it—it was one of the first incidents in my life.”
“Tell me now then,” said I.
But he shook his head and smiled. “Not now—wait till I can get a wreath of it fresh from a Cambridgeshire hedgerow, and then I will tell you my tale.”
“I shall think it is a tale about a lady, if you speak of it so mysteriously,” said I, and when I turned to him I saw he blushed. “It was so then,” I said, with the slightest pique possible. I was not quite pleased.