‘Oh, my dear, dear Swithin!’ she cried miserably. ‘You have compromised me by your forgetfulness. I have claimed the article as mine. My brother did not tell me that the Bishop brought it from the cabin. What can I, can I do, that neither the Bishop nor my brother may conclude I was the woman there?’
‘But if we announce our marriage—’
‘Even as your wife, the position was too undignified—too I don’t know what—for me ever to admit that I was there! Right or wrong, I must declare the bracelet was not mine. Such an escapade—why, it would make me ridiculous in the county; and anything rather than that!’
‘I was in hope that you would agree to let our marriage be known,’ said Swithin, with some disappointment. ‘I thought that these circumstances would make the reason for doing so doubly strong.’
‘Yes. But there are, alas, reasons against it still stronger! Let me have my way.’
‘Certainly, dearest. I promised that before you agreed to be mine. My reputation—what is it! Perhaps I shall be dead and forgotten before the next transit of Venus!’
She soothed him tenderly, but could not tell him why she felt the reasons against any announcement as yet to be stronger than those in favour of it. How could she, when her feeling had been cautiously fed and developed by her brother Louis’s unvarnished exhibition of Swithin’s material position in the eyes of the world?—that of a young man, the scion of a family of farmers recently her tenants, living at the homestead with his grandmother, Mrs. Martin.
To soften her refusal she said in declaring it, ‘One concession, Swithin, I certainly will make. I will see you oftener. I will come to the cabin and tower frequently; and will contrive, too, that you come to the house occasionally. During the last winter we passed whole weeks without meeting; don’t let us allow that to happen again.’
‘Very well, dearest,’ said Swithin good-humouredly. ‘I don’t care so terribly much for the old man’s opinion of me, after all. For the present, then, let things be as they are.’
Nevertheless, the youth felt her refusal more than he owned; but the unequal temperament of Swithin’s age, so soon depressed on his own account, was also soon to recover on hers, and it was with almost a child’s forgetfulness of the past that he took her view of the case.