CHAPTER III.
HATTY.
The brief silence was broken by Edna.
“What a nice boy your brother is!” she observed, in rather a patronizing tone.
Bessie looked up in some surprise.
“Tom does not consider himself a boy, I assure you; he is one-and-twenty, and ever since he has gone to Oxford he thinks himself of great consequence. I dare say we spoil him among us, as he is our only brother now. If Frank had lived,” and here Bessie sighed, “he would have been five-and-twenty by this time; but he died four years ago. It was such a blow to poor father and mother; he was so good and clever, and he was studying for a doctor; but he caught a severe chill, and congestion of the lungs came on, and in a few days he was dead. I don’t think mother has ever been quite the same since his death—Frank was so much to her.”
“How very sad!” returned Edna sympathetically, for Bessie’s eyes had grown soft and misty as she touched this chord of sadness; “it must be terrible to lose any one whom one loves.” And then she added, with a smile, “I did not mean to hurt your feelings by calling your brother a boy, but he seemed very young to me. You see, I am engaged, and Mr. Sinclair (that is my fiancé) is nearly thirty, and he is so grave and quiet that any one like your brother seems like a boy beside him.”
“You are engaged?” ejaculated Bessie, in an awestruck tone.
“Yes; it seems a pity, does it not? at least mamma says so; she thinks I am too young and giddy to know my own mind; and yet she is very fond of Neville—Mr. Sinclair, I mean. She will have it that we are not a bit suited to each other, and I dare say she is right, for certainly we do not think alike on a single point.”
Bessie’s eyes opened rather widely at this candid statement. She was a simple little soul, and had not yet learned the creed of emancipation. She held the old-fashioned views that her mother had held before her. Her mother seldom talked on these subjects, and Bessie had inherited this reticence. She listened with a sort of wondering disgust when her girl acquaintances chattered flippantly about their lovers, and boasted openly of their power over them.
“If this sort of thing ever comes to me,” thought Bessie on these occasions, “I shall think it too wonderful and precious to make it the subject of idle conversation. How can any one take upon themselves the responsibility of another human being’s happiness—for that is what it really means—and turn it into a jest? It is far too sacred and beautiful a thing for such treatment. I think mother is right when she says, ‘Girls of the present day have so little reticence.’”