'I have been looking out for you the last three-quarters of an hour,' he said, addressing Sara. 'I could not see the carriage anywhere.—Miss Garston, we have met before, but I think we hardly know each other,' looking at me with some degree of interest. Sara's cousin was no longer indifferent to him.
I answered him as civilly as I could, but I could see his attention wandered to his young fiancée, and he soon rode round to her side of the carriage. It was evident, as Lesbia said, that the colonel was honestly in love with Sara. She looked very young beside him, but there must have been something very winning in her sweet looks and words to the man who had known trouble and had laid a young wife and child to rest in an Indian grave.
Before the evening was over I felt I liked Colonel Ferguson immensely, and thought far more of Sara for being his choice; there was an air of frankness and bonhomie about him that won one's heart; he was sensible and practical. In spite of his fondness for Sara, he would keep her in order: one could see that. I heard him rebuke her very gently that first evening for some extravagance she was planning. They were standing apart from the others on the balcony, but I was near the open window, and I heard him say distinctly, in a grave voice,—
'I am very sorry to disappoint you, but I must ask you to give up this idea, my darling; it would not be right in our position: surely you must see that.'
'No, Donald, I do not see it a bit,' she answered quickly.
'Then will you be satisfied with my seeing it, and give it up for my sake, dear?'
I knew when they came back into the room that he had got his way. Sara was smiling as happily as usual: her disappointment had not gone very deep. Her future husband would have very little trouble with her. She was neither self-willed nor selfish. She wanted to be happy herself and make other people happy; she would be easily guided.
When we left the Park Colonel Ferguson rode off to his club, and we drove home rather quickly. There were some visitors waiting for Sara in the drawing-room, so I went up to my old room to take off my bonnet. Martha would unpack my boxes, Aunt Philippa told me, as she gave me another kiss in the hall.
I had not been there for five minutes when I heard flying footsteps down the passage, and the next moment Jill's strong arms had taken me by the shoulders and turned me round.
'Now, Jill, I don't mean to be strangled as usual'; but she left me no breath for more.