Well, Mrs. Ellison was not used to giving way; but she was very fond of this proud and handsome boy; and she gave just one sob, and tears gathered in her eyes.
"You are not very kind, Vin," she said.
And what marvellous thing was this that instantaneously smote his heart? Why, Maisrie had made use of this very expression on the preceding afternoon! And all of a sudden he seemed to recognise that his adversary here was a woman; she was akin to his beloved—and therefore to be treated gently; Maisrie's voice and eyes seemed to be pleading for her: surely that was enough? He hesitated for a moment: then he said—
"Very well; let it be as you wish. We shall see how we get on, with the one thing that is of more importance to me than anything else shut out from mention. But I must say this to you, aunt: I do not see I am doing anything that the most fastidious person can object to if I put a few pretty things into the room of the girl who is to be my wife."
"How do you know that she is to be your wife, Vin?" she said, rather sadly.
"I know," he made answer.
"My poor boy!" she said; and then she took him by the hand and led him back to the little table at which they had been sitting; and there they had some further conversation about more or less indifferent things, with the one all-important subject carefully avoided. And then it was time for them to go away and dress for dinner.
Lord Musselburgh dined with them that evening, and remained some time after the other guests had gone. To Vincent it seemed a puzzling thing that two betrothed people should make so merry. They appeared so well content with their present estate; they were so assured as to the future; no anxieties; no conflicting hopes and fears; they were in the happiest mood. Next morning, too, Lord Musselburgh again made his appearance; and the three of them went out for a stroll along the promenade. All the world was shining fair and clear; Mrs. Ellison was looking her best, and seemed to know it; her fiancé was in a gay humour. Why, they were almost like the 'lover and his lass' of whom Thomas Morley sang nigh three hundred years ago—those 'pretty country folks' who lived in a perpetual spring-time, with birds singing hey-ding-a-ding-a-ding to them through all the jocund hours. The tall and elegant young widow blushed and laughed like a maid; her eyes were sarcastic, playful, amused, according to her varying mood; the sunlight touched her pretty brown hair. There was, indeed, a sort of audacity of comeliness about her, that set Vincent thinking of a very different kind of beauty—the beauty that seems to be dowered with a divine and angelic sadness. He was walking with these two; but he did not take part in their frolic talk; nor did he pay much attention to the crowd of people, the butterflies of fashion, who had come out into the pleasant sunshine. He seemed to see before him a face that, with all its youth, and its touch of colour, and its grace of outline, was strangely pensive and wistful. And again he asked himself, as many a time he had asked himself, what that expression meant: whether it had been brought there by experience of the many vicissitudes of life, or by loneliness, or whether it was not something more tragic still—the shadow of an impending fate. There was more than that he could not understand: her curious resignation, her hopelessness as to the future, her wish to get away. And what was it she had concealed from him? And why had she declared she could not ever be his wife?
"You are very silent, Vin," his fair neighbour said, turning her merry eyes towards him at last. "Here is Lord Musselburgh declaring that if he were a Jew he would turn dentist, to have it out with the Christians for what they did in the Middle Ages. A horrid revenge, wouldn't it be?—and so mean—under pretence of affording relief. Oh, look at that girl over there—I do believe the ruff is coming back—we shall all be Elizabethans by-and-by."
"But what business had women ever with ruffs?" Lord Musselburgh interposed. "Why, when the dandies and bucks of Henry VIII.'s time began to make themselves splendid by puffing themselves out round the neck, of course it was in imitation of the stag—as the stag becomes when he is supposed to captivate the fancy of the hinds; but you don't find the hinds with any similar adornments. Such things are proper to males: why should women try to look magnificent round the back of the neck? Why should a hen covet a cockscomb? It's all wrong—it's against natural laws."