He laughed, and let her go. The haughty recoil of pride in the fibre was not to be reasoned away.
It was a clear afternoon in mid-autumn; and when Miss Pembroke stepped from the priest's door, she paused a minute on the sidewalk, and hesitated which way to go. She did not wish to return home, and she did not think of any other place where she would rather go.
And then, without looking, she was aware of a tall gentleman, who came down the street, and, still without looking, knew that he had crossed to her side of the street, and was approaching her. And then, with a perverseness which was scarcely natural to her, she turned quite coolly in the opposite direction, and walked from him, perhaps lest he might think that she wished for his company. Not but she and Mr. Schöninger were on the most friendly, and even cordial, terms—it was, indeed, taken for granted in Crichton that they were the best of friends—but—in short, she walked away from him. Perhaps she found his full and prosperous life a little discordant with her saddened one. She almost fancied sometimes that he had an air of triumphant pride, and that he was being spoiled by the adulation paid him on all sides.
She had been wishing lately that she could go to Annette; and, now that Gerald was dead, if the ambiguous letter they had received really meant that, perhaps Annette would like to have her. Miss Pembroke felt strangely lonely in her native town, where she knew everybody, and where she had not, certainly, to complain of any lack of attention. But she would be lonely for ever rather than Mr. Schöninger should think that she waited on F. Chevreuse's step for him. He must have been at the end of the street when she came out, and—surely he would never dare to think that she saw him, and had been giving him time to overtake her!
Mr. Schöninger was meantime walking leisurely behind her quickening steps, intending to overtake [pg 685] her presently, but wishing first to watch her a little, and to think of some things. One was that he did not approve of her wearing black any longer. She was beautiful in anything, but too sad in this; and, besides, it interfered with certain plans of his. He made a slight reckoning, as nearly correct as the masculine mind could make it on such a subject. She might put on gray, or black and white, immediately. That would enable her to wear a rich purple in the winter. He liked to see her in purple. Some day, when she should be older, she must have a trailing robe of purple velvet with diamonds. Well, in the spring, then, she could change her deeper color for one of those delicate lavenders or lilacs that women know how to look pretty in; and then the way would be quite open for white, and rose, and blue, and all the fresh, gay colors a bride might wish to wear.
“We should be married by the first of May, at latest,” thought the gentleman very decidedly.
Miss Pembroke was quite right in fancying that there was something triumphant in Mr. Schöninger's air; but she did not believe, and it was not true, her pettish charge that he was being spoiled by adulation. All was going well with him. Hosts of friends surrounded him—friends as sincere as any one can claim; he did not believe they would stand any great test, but, also, he did not believe that they were hypocrites. In his profession he was winning gold and reputation; and, what no one but himself knew as yet, the fortune for which he had vainly struggled so long was approaching him of itself. Two of those who had stood between it and him had died, and there remained now but a feeble old man. With his death all other claims would die. And not least in his cause of congratulation was his conviction that this fair woman, who walked before him with the black drapery fluttering back from her light foot, the braid of hair just showing its glossy bronze beneath the mourning veil, and, as she turned the corner of a street, the curve of her smooth cheek glowing like a peach, was his own.
What made her cheek so red now?
“Honora!” he said, quickening his pace.
She stopped with a start.