“I’m keeping up my end here, and it’s no slouch of a job, but I’m not forgetting what she promised for one minute! And I’m not forgetting what her promise means,” he said, obstinately.
“Tha’d like me to tell her that?” she said.
“If she doesn’t know it, you telling her wouldn’t cut any ice,” was his reply. “I’m saying it because I want you to know it, and because it does me good to say it out loud. I’m going to marry her.”
“That’s for her and thee to settle,” she commented impersonally.
“It is settled,” he answered. “There’s no way out of it. Will you shake hands with me again before I go?”
“Aye,” she consented, “I will.”
When she took his hand she held it a minute. Her own was warm, and there was no limpness about it. The secret which had seemed to conceal itself behind her eyes had some difficulty in keeping itself wholly in the background.
“She knows aw’ tha does,” she said coolly, as if she were not suddenly revealing immensities. “She knows who cooms an’ who goes, an’ what they think o’ thee, an’ how tha gets on wi’ ’em. Now get thee gone, lad, an’ dunnot tha coom back till her or me sends for thee.”
WITHIN an hour of this time the afternoon post brought to Lady Mallowe a letter which she read with an expression in which her daughter recognized relief. It was in fact a letter for which she had waited with anxiety, and the invitation it contained was a tribute to her social skill at its highest water-mark. In her less heroic moments, she had felt doubts of receiving it, which had caused shudders to run the entire length of her spine.