A little bunch of sweet smelling violets dropped out of the letter and scented the room—Joan always loved flowers. She liked everything that was pleasant and good to look upon.
Alfred Brownhill! he was a staid, middle-aged man, with a comfortable home and a prosperous income. No wonder that old Mr. Fulloch had wished for the marriage. He would be surprised, too, and would wonder that his grand-daughter had not returned to his roof, as she was prepared to follow his advice at last. But Embrance saw clearly enough that Joan would never have done that. A runaway wedding, and a triumphant return to Doveton, would be much more to her taste. She looked at Joan’s unused cup and saucer on the table, and she shivered as she realised the truth; her friend would never come back. While she had been rejecting the pleadings of a good man who loved her, Joan had perhaps been telling her husband that “Embrance wished her to marry a painter.”
“I will write to him,” she said, turning to the little table where she had so often sat when he and Joan talked together over the fire. She never swerved from her intention; he had been cruelly treated; he might not care to accept her apology, that did not matter. She must see him once more, and explain to him that she had been deceived—mistaken, that was a more gracious word. She would write no more than she could help.
“Dear Mr. Meade,—Please come and see me. I have made a mistake.—Yours truly, Embrance Clemon.”
She knew his address, she had written to him before, asking him to do various little acts of kindness for Joan. Once she had been to tea at his rooms, with Mrs. Rakely and Joan, he had shown her his sketches and asked her opinion about his pictures. It was all long ago. It had been a bitterly cold day, Joan had caught a bad sore throat, and was ill for a week afterwards; she had been an impatient invalid, and Horace had called to inquire after her very often, and had left fruit and flowers.
Embrance could no longer endure the loneliness of the little parlour; she missed Joan terribly, her laugh and her many coaxing ways. She longed for air; it was a good excuse for posting the letter herself. As she tied her bonnet-strings before the glass, she shrank back aghast at the sight of her pale face. She put on a thick veil and threw a shawl over her shoulders; she would feel happier when the letter was once in the pillar-box. A hundred times she had been up and down the crooked staircase in the dark; to-night, it might be that she was tired, or that her eyes were full of tears, but her foot slipped, she clutched instinctively at the banister, missed it, and fell down into the darkness below.
So it came about that the letter to Horace Meade was left unposted till the following morning.
Some days passed before Embrance could leave her room; the doctor, whom the landlady had summoned in her fright, said that she had sprained her ankle badly, and ordered perfect rest. The people in the house were good to the solitary invalid; the first-floor lodger brought her knitting and a great many dull stories of her own youth, and experiences of sprained ankles and broken limbs, and came and sat by her sofa, while the landlady and Annie were unceasing in their attentions. Some of Embrance’s pupils called, and Joan wrote sheets of sympathy, crossed and recrossed. Her husband sent his kind regards and hoped that Miss Clemon would come down to Doveton and stay there till she was quite convalescent. However, Embrance refused the invitation, she would rather stay at home for the present; later on, she would like to visit Joan.
Mrs. Brownhill, in the snug breakfast-room in her new home, fretted a little over this refusal; then she recovered her spirits and laid plans for summer excursions; it would be better to have Embrance, after all, when the roses were in bloom. Alfred Brownhill was very much in love with his young wife, and considered her interest in the welfare of her sick friend the prettiest trait of character imaginable.
“Poor old Embrance,” exclaimed Joan, with her hand in his; “I should die of loneliness in that pokey room all by myself, but she has so much strength of will; I don’t believe she minds a bit. I shall never be like her!”