"They are going to be married?," I interrupted.
"Nothing has been said about it—yet," answered Ruth.
I know you will not misunderstand me, still less make mischief, if I tell you that I heaved a sigh of relief. Fond as I am of Phyllida, she would not have made a very suitable wife for Will, though it is essential for him to marry some one with a little money and I have felt lately that, if he could marry any one, it would put an end to this persecution from the girl who is trying to blackmail him... At the same time it seemed a little strange for Phyllida to be summoning the entire family, when, so far as I could make out, Hilary had not said a word...
"So you are expecting Colonel Butler," I said to her at tea.
"He's coming to-day," she answered rather brusquely. "I thought he might have been here by now... Well, Aunt Ann, was I wise to wait? You told me to go right away and forget him; you always said you wanted to turn my thoughts."
Do you know, for a dreadful moment I fancied that she was trying to reopen her insane vendetta... When she circulated those truly wicked stories about me...
"Dear Phyllida," I said, "did I ever try to shake your faith in him? No one, not even you, has a greater admiration or regard for Colonel Butler; he has done me more than one inestimable service, and I think he would be the first to admit that he owes something to my friendship and advice. Ask him, dear child! I have nothing to fear from his testimony; but there is a right way and a wrong way in most things, and he will tell you that, on my advice, he chose the right. If I urged your father to send you away, if I tried to the best of my poor abilities to distract your thoughts, it was because I could not bear to see my own niece, my own brother's child, the picture of misery that you were."
"Well, you'd look miserable," said Phyllida, "if the one person you cared for had been set against you and if everybody said you'd tried to capture him and he'd run away."
Who it was that Phyllida imagined she was quoting I have really no idea. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that, if a girl conducts a love affair quite so ostentatiously as she had done, she must not be surprised if people ask questions when, all of a sudden, nothing comes of it. It was hardly the moment to talk about ostentation, however. You remember the terrace at the Hall; we were sitting there like people in the first row of the stalls, waiting for the curtain to go up—Brackenbury, Ruth, their boy Culroyd and Hilda, his wife, my brother-in-law Spenworth, his new wife, Arthur, Will and myself. I really pitied any poor young man with such an audience to face...
"But all has now turned out well?," I asked. "Dear Phyllida, I am very, very glad."