Then Winifred faltered a little, remembering how he had advised her to humour her father. She made a little pause of reflection, and then abandoned the subject for the moment; but only to return to it a hundred and a hundred times. She was not one of those that prolong a misunderstanding through a lifetime. She pondered and pondered, and it was her instinct to think herself in the wrong. She had been hasty, she had been self-absorbed. And had he not a right to be offended when she so distinctly, of her own will, by no one’s suggestion, put him aside from her counsels, and let him know that she must deal with her brothers alone? It made her shiver to think what a thing it was she had thus done. She would have done it again, it was a necessity of the position in which she found herself. But yet when you reflect, to put your betrothed husband away from you in a great crisis of fate, to reject his aid, to bid him—for it was as good as bidding him—leave her to arrange matters in her own way, what an outrage was that! She could not think how she could have done it, and yet she would have done it over again. To get Miss Farrell to see this was difficult, but she succeeded at last; and then they both trembled and grew pale together to think of what had been done. Poor Edward! and all those days when Winifred had sat miserable in her room, feeling that her last hope and prop had failed her, and that she was left alone in the world, what had he been thinking on his side? That she had thrown him off, that she would have none of him? In their consultations these ladies made great use of the man’s wounded pride. They allowed to each other that it was the wrong of all others which he would be least likely to bear. It was not only a wrong, it was an insult. How could they ever have thought otherwise? It was he who was forsaken, and that without a word, without a reason given.
They had settled themselves, after some wanderings, in one of those villages of the Riviera, which fashion and the pursuit of health have taken out of the hands of their peasant inhabitants. It was not a great place, full of life and commotion; but a little picturesque cluster of houses, small and great, with an old campanile rising out of the midst of them, and a soft background of mild olive-trees behind. They had thought they would stay there till the winter was over, till England had begun to grow green again, and the east winds were gone; but already, though it was not yet Christmas, they were beginning to reconsider the matter, to feel home calling them over the misty seas. Christmas! but what a Christmas! with roses blooming, and all the landscape green and soft, the sea warm enough to bathe in, the sunshine too hot at noon. Winifred had begun to weary of the eternal greenness, of the skies which were always clear, of the air which caressed and never smote her cheek, before they had long been established in the little paradise which Miss Farrell, even with all her desire to see her child happy, could not pretend not to be pleased with.
“I cannot believe it is Christmas,” Winifred said discontentedly. “No frost, no cold, even flowers!” as if this were a kind of insult. “Everything,” she cried, “is out of season. I don’t see how we can spend Christmas here.”
“It is not like Christmas weather,” said Miss Farrell; “but still, my dear, neither was it in the Holy Land, I should suppose, not like what we call Christmas,” she added, faltering a little; “but it is very nice, Winnie, don’t you think, dear?”
“No, I don’t think it is nice: it is enervating, it is unmeaning, it has no character in it. It might be May,” cried Winnie; and then she added with a sudden outburst of passion, “I don’t think I can bear it any longer. I cannot bear it any longer. Oh, Miss Farrell, Edward! what can he be thinking of me, if he has not given up thinking of me altogether?”
“No, dear, not that,” Miss Farrell said, soothing her.
“What, then? he must be beginning to hate me. I cannot let Christmas pass and this go on. Think of him alone amongst the frost and the snow, nothing but his sick people, no one to cheer him, called out perhaps in the middle of the night, riding miles and miles to comfort some poor creature, and no one, no one to comfort him!”
“My dear child!” Miss Farrell cried, taking Winifred into her kind arms.
At this moment there was a tinkle at the queer little bell outside—or rather it had tinkled at the moment when Winifred spoke of the frost and snow. When Miss Farrell rose and hastened to her, to raise her downcast head and dry her tears, the old lady gave a start and cry, displacing suddenly that head which she had drawn to her own breast. Winifred, too, looked up in the sudden shock; and there, opposite to her in the doorway, a cold freshness as of the larger atmosphere outside coming in with him, stood Edward Langton, pale and eager, asking, “May I come in?” with a voice that was unsteady, between deadly anxiety and certain happiness.
They said a great deal to each other, enough to fill volumes; but so far as the present history is concerned, there need be no more to say.