‘I have got a letter from Jack, which I don’t understand at all.’
She had recovered her breath. There was an air of defiance and resolution upon her face. She drew her chair into the open space in front of Susie, and challenged her as if to single combat.
‘I want to know,’ she said, ‘from you—I don’t mind Mr. Cattley being there, because he knows us both so well, and has been in it all along. I want to know, from you—is there any reason, any secret reason, that he could find out and did not know before, that could stand between Jack and me?’
Susie looked at her with an astonished face, her mouth a little open, her eyes fixed in wonder. She did not make any reply, but that was comprehensible, for the question seemed to take her altogether by surprise.
‘I don’t think you understand me,’ said Elly, plaintively, ‘and I’m sure I don’t wonder. You know, Mr. Cattley, at least; Jack went away full of his great scheme which was to make him rich, which was to make Aunt Mary’s opposition as much contrary to prudence as it was to—to good sense and—everything,’ cried Elly, ‘for of course the only drawback in it, as everybody must have seen with half an eye, was that I was not good enough for him, a rising engineer, with the finest profession in the world! However, we were engaged all the same. People might say not, but we were—in every sense of the word—I to him and he to me!’
Her face was like the sky as she told her tale, now swept by clouds, now clearing into full and open light. She grew red and pale, and dark and bright in a continued succession, and kept her eyes fixed with mingled defiance and appeal on Susie’s face.
‘Now tell me,’ she said, ‘for you must know—is there anything that Jack could find out that would change all that in a moment? What is there that he could find out that would make him think differently of himself and of every creature? Can’t you tell me, Susie? You are his only sister; you must know, if anyone knows. What is it? What is it? Mr. Cattley, her face is changing too. Oh, for goodness sake, make her tell me! If I only knew, I could judge for myself. Make her say what it is!’
The clouds that came and went on Elly’s face seemed suddenly to have blown upon that wind of emotion to Susie’s. After her first look of wonder, she had given the questioner a quick suspicious troubled glance. Then Susie picked up her work again and bent her head over it, and appeared to withdraw her attention altogether. She went on working in an agitated way a minute or two after this appeal had been made to her. Then she suddenly raised her head.
‘What could he have found out? How should I know what he could find out? What was there to find out?’
‘These are the questions I am asking you,’ cried Elly. ‘Here is his letter. I brought it to show you. It is a letter,’ cried the girl, ‘which anybody may see, not what anyone could call a love-letter. I suppose he has found out, after having spoken, that he did not—care for me as he thought.’