“You know we all read our letters, Janet,” said Gussy, “and stand on no ceremony.”
“I know, thanks; but it does not matter. My Clover news will keep: it is much diluted generally, and I am so late this morning. I cannot think what has made me so late.”
Dolff was very silent at that morning meal. He scarcely spoke to anyone. He had none of the remarks to make which he was generally so anxious to expend upon Miss Summerhayes. If anybody had been specially interested in Dolff it would have been seen that he watched every movement Janet made—not as he usually did, but with a suspicious, anxious inspection. But his sisters were indifferent, and Janet herself too much excited to pay any attention to him. She did not know that he had seen her letter. When she saw it, she cast a quick glance at the other side of the table to see if by any chance Julia or Gussy had noted a handwriting which must have been familiar. But they were both entirely unconscious, at their ease; and she never thought of Dolff. It was unlikely that a man should have looked at her letters, but one of the girls might have done it with that more lively curiosity which girls have about little things. Julia might have done it “for fun;” but Janet did not think of Dolff. She was, therefore, quite at ease so far as they were concerned, though the letter burned her pocket, demanding to be read. As soon as she had an excuse to rise from the table she did so, still unaware of the spectator, full of heavy thoughts, who said to himself, “Now she is going to read it. She will not trust herself to read it before any of us.” He did not know that there was any special reason why Meredith should write to Janet. Had it been Julia who had seen it she would have said so, and Janet would doubtless have found an explanation. But Dolff said nothing. A letter in Meredith’s hand—Meredith, who was, or should be, his sister’s pledged and affianced lover—who could have nothing to do with Janet that was not clandestine and guilty. Dolff’s colorless countenance—with its light hair and light mustache, a face which was more foolish than comic, a half-innocent, half-jovial countenance—was stern as that of a judge. What had she to do with Meredith? What did she know of him, save as Gussy’s lover? Was she so far ignorant of honor and virtue that she should allow another woman’s lover to write to her? and what to Janet could Meredith have to say?
It was at once less, and more guilty than Dolff imagined—for it was touching the papers she had sent him that Meredith wrote—but the manner of the writing was not exactly that of a business communication. Meredith wrote as follows:—
“My Dearest—
“Do you know you have set me on the right track, as I believe, by your mad scraps of paper? They are mad, but there’s method in them. I am coming to your house to-night, but I shan’t dare, you know, to speak to you. Come to the library, where we have met before, at about four o’clock. You can make an excuse to change books or match worsted or something—any pretext you like, but come. It will be dark, and I can walk with you part of the way home. There is no telling what may come out of those papers of yours—freedom, I think, in the first place, and the power to decide upon my own life. Come, my little Janet, my sweet little girl, at four, to your devoted—C.”
While Janet read this her heart beat and thumped upon her bosom, and took away her breath. He had no right to write to her like that. It was abominable of him, a great liberty—“My dearest!” She was not his dearest, she was only an acquaintance whom he had known about two months. And to bid her come “where they had met before,” as if she had been in the habit of meeting him before—as if it had not been merely an accidental or chance meeting. Janet was very angry, and shed hot and bitter tears. But yet to be called his dearest, though it was false, was somehow sweet. “His little Janet!” She was not his little Janet; he had nothing to do with her. How dared he?—how dared he?
Janet went with scarlet cheeks to the school-room, when she heard Julia moving about there; and with her soul as much disturbed as her face. How difficult it is to attend to verbs and spelling when your heart is rent between two things—the good which you can barely see, and are doubtful of, and which as so painful; and the evil, which has everything to recommend it except that it is evil. Janet tried to put that conflict aside while she attended to Julia’s lessons, thinking all the time how trifling was the one in consideration of the other, what loss of time to worry concerning the way in which she spelt disappointed. It was just as miserable a word if you spelt it one way or the other; diss-apointed does not look so well, but Julia knew no difference. Poor little girl! it is perhaps as vain writing down the tale of Janet’s little troubles, while the narrator perhaps has a heart filled with things that hurt and wound a great deal more. But Julia could not fail to remark those scarlet cheeks.
“Why are you so red?” she said; “you look as if you had been scorching your cheeks, as mamma says I do, reading over the fire.”
“It is nothing,” said Janet; “have you got out all the books?”