"Is--is----" The woman paused. She did not like to say Charlie or Mr. Cheyne, and she could not yet bring herself to call him by his new name. "Is--is he going with you, or waiting for you? I hope all is pleasant between you. You are not looking very bright, Marion."
"I feel a little tired, that is all. The stir will do me good. Have you any letter for post, aunt?"
"You have not quarrelled? There is something wrong with you. I hope no difference has come between you?"
Miss Traynor's old views with regard to caste had not been changed in the least, but they had been placed in abeyance. It was not now a question of preordination. She knew Marion loved him better than all else on earth, and she loved Marion, and only Marion. It was therefore no longer an abstract question. The matter now concerned her darling girl, her only care, her only hope, her only joy, the one lamp that illumined the downward way of her life.
She need not think of him as a duke; she need think of him as Charles Cheyne only. He should be nothing more than that to her, if he might be everything else he had been to her darling Marion. She could not originate or adopt a new theory on the subject of caste, but she could hold her old one at arm's length when it threatened the happiness of the young girl round whose welfare all her hopes centered.
When Marion spoke, her voice was low, clear, and free from tremulousness.
"No, aunt, we have not quarrelled. A difference, without a quarrel, has come between us, but I have written a letter to him," holding it up; "and this will make it all right"--she added mentally--"for him."
"I am glad, my darling, there is no quarrel. Of course we must all have our differences, but need not have any quarrels. I wonder, if I asked him, would he come and dine with us to-morrow?"
"I am afraid he would not. I think you had better not write."
As she said these words, she went out of the room.