"Yes, Jimmy—that sounds very nice," replied Alice, a little doubtfully. "Of course I'm not in any desperate hurry to get married—or—or anything of that sort; but why should we have to wait? If it's money, Aunt and Uncle Baffall are sure to be awfully good to me—and you're becoming a greater man every day. Do tell me what it is, Jimmy? I won't breathe it to a living soul. Please, Jimmy dear?"
"It is impossible," replied Jimmy dramatically. "The difficulty—the secret difficulty—may be got rid of—sooner, in fact, than I imagine. But you must trust me. Surely, if you love me, there should be no difficulty about that."
"Very well," said Alice after a pause. "It certainly sounds a little romantic—and I love romance. And now, I suppose"—she glanced quickly round the room, and then turned to him—"now, I suppose, we may consider ourselves—what's the horrid word?"
"Engaged," said Jimmy, with a smile, but with secret misgiving.
Thus it happened that for a week or two Jimmy went to the house in a new character; and Ashby Feak came no more. The Baffalls made no secret of their delight; indeed, Mrs. Baffall said, more than once, that she had "seen it coming for ages." And Jimmy, though very much in love, and though telling himself again and again that it would all come right, and that in some fashion or other the tangle could be smoothed out, yet went to the house like a thief—even looking about him with the needless fear that he might be watched. And now more than ever the quiet figure of the woman in black, with her dark head bent over a sleeping child, was with him; it sprang, indeed, between him and Alice when he would sometimes have taken her into his arms.
It was on a night when his misgivings had been deeper than usual, and when he had walked the streets for an hour or more, fighting out the problem for himself, and finding no answer, that he went back to his new rooms, to be told by the porter that a lady had come to see him, and had been shown up. She would not give a name; but she wanted to see Mr. Larrance particularly, and would wait. Mr. Larrance was an old friend, she had said.
Jimmy climbed the stairs, wondering a little who could have called at such an hour.
He went in a little eagerly; although he had left her but an hour or two before, there was the vague possibility in his mind that this might be Alice. Always expecting something to happen that should show him a way out of the tangle, or increase it—for ever dreading that Alice should confront him with a full knowledge of all the circumstances—he felt, even as he mounted the stairs, that someone might have been to her, and might have told her; and that here she was, hot and indignant, to tax him with what he had done.
He opened the outer door, and went in. His visitor rose from a chair in which she had been seated, and came towards him; it was Moira. And in that moment—in the mere flash of a second, as it seemed—he saw with something of astonishment that her hands were held out towards him, and that she was smiling. So quick was it, that when, a moment later (perhaps at sight of something in his face, or some gesture, half of repulsion), she dropped her hands, and the smile faded from her eyes, he could almost have sworn that she had not moved at all.
"You didn't mind my waiting—Jimmy," she said, a little hesitatingly. "I wanted so much to see you—and it doesn't matter—with us—does it?"