"Oh, yes, yes! if you please," said Dolly, extremely glad to get upon a more abstract subject of conversation.
"I owe that to myself, perhaps," Mr. Shubrick went on; "and I certainly owe it to you. I told you how I got into my engagement with her. It was a boyish fancy; but all the same, I was bound by it; and I should have been legally bound before now, only that Christina always put off that whenever I proposed it. I found too that the putting it off did not make me miserable. Dolly, the case is going to be different this time!"
"You mean," said Dolly doubtfully, "it is going to make you miserable?"
"No! I mean, you are not going to put me off."
"Oh, but!"——said Dolly flushing, and stopped.
"I have settled that point in my own mind," he said, smiling; "it is as well you should know it at once.—So time went by, until I went to spend that Christmas Day in Rome. After that day I knew nearly all that I know now. Of course it followed, that I could not accept the invitation to Sorrento, when you were expected to be there. I could not venture to see you again while I was bound in honour to another woman. I stayed on board ship, those hot summer days, when all the officers that could went ashore. I stayed and worked at my problem—what I was to do."
He paused and Dolly said nothing. She was listening intently, and entirely forgetting that the sunlight was coming very slant and would soon be gone, and that home and supper were waiting for her managing hand. Dolly's eyes were fixed upon another hand, which held hers, and her ears were strained to catch every word. She rarely dared glance at Mr. Shubrick's face.
"I wonder what counsel you would have given me?" he went on,—"if I could have asked it of you as an indifferent person,—which you were."
"I don't know," said Dolly. "I know what people think"——
"Yes, I knew what people think, too; and it a little embarrassed my considerations. However, Dolly, I made up my mind at last to this;—that to marry Christina would be acting a lie; that I could not do that; and that if I could, a lie to be acted all my life long would be too heavy for me. Negatively, I made up my mind. Positively, I did not know exactly how I should work it. But I must see Christina. And as soon as affairs on board ship permitted, I got a furlough of a few days and went to Sorrento. I got there one lovely afternoon, about three weeks after you had gone. Sea and sky and the world generally were flooded with light and colour, so as I have never seen them anywhere else, it seems to me. You know how it is."