"Look here, Yorick! Don't be a goose. She's in the next room. Just you go in and tell her your idea, and see what she thinks. Do, dear boy! Only you mustn't be as cold as Charity, you know!"
"All right. I'll do justice to the position."
"You will?—promise!... Very good. Now, Yorick—Yorick—dear old Yorick! See what I'll do! I'll give you my blessing and God-speed!" And then she took him by both hands and kissed his face. He would have liked to return the kiss; but, then, you see, it would have impaired the elder-sister tone.
Was Adeline Fossett aware how she had put the last nail in the coffin of that little scheme, when she presumed on their mock-fraternity in that dangerous way? Why—she wasn't even his Deceased Wife's half-Sister, Marianne's relation to Challis!
She sat and listened for what she expected to go on in the next room. But it came not. As she waited there—a fair distance from the door, not to be eavesdropping—she looked more than ever as if she might have married. Her colour went and came as Hope rose and fell; and every little chance that Yorick's voice was going to be less good-humoured and genial, and come from his heart with a proper sound of love in it, made her own heart pause on a beat. But, alas!—the voices only went on as before. Oh dear!—would nothing come of it, after all?
It went on for a long time, that talk. And till half-way through that time there was hope on the face of the listener, following its sounds without distinguishing a syllable. Then the irritating bonhomie, the equable fluency of the masculine tones, the vexatious household dryness of the feminine ones, became maddening to ears that expected at least cordial warmth. Oh, if she could only enter unseen, and prompt the apathy of the speaker! She bit her lip with vexation, and found it difficult to resist the temptation to listen outright. Surely Yorick must have reached the crucial point by now! Or were they, after all, talking of something else all the while?...
There, that was emphasis, anyhow! And any evidence that the topic had been fairly broached was welcome. Only, the warmth was on the wrong side; it was Aunt Bessy's voice for one thing; and, for another, was a good deal more like indignation than affection. Now, very likely you know that, when something you cannot hear is repeated several times, it becomes audible however honourably determined you may be not to listen to it. At about the third repetition Miss Fossett, though she sincerely believed she hadn't been listening, had become aware that the phrase was, "Why can't you make her marry you herself?" and, moreover, that her own self was the one referred to. Her heart went with a bound, and her breath got caught in a gasp; and then, somehow without sense or reason, her hair had got loose and come down, and she was getting it arranged at the mirror over the chimney-piece, with the bevelled edges and the ebony frame, and trying to make out she had never begun to cry, when Yorick came back into the room, saying: "What do you think Bess says, Addie? She says if I were to ask you, you would marry me yourself." She didn't know precisely what reply she made. But she certainly had no grounds for complaining of the coldness of the Rector's reception of it.
When, five minutes later, Miss Caldecott followed her brother-in-law into the room, the lady and gentleman were still before the looking-glass, apparently very much pleased. And the latter, without taking his arm from the waist of the former, said: "I say, Bess, what a ghastly couple of fools we have been!" and broke into one of his big laughs.
"Speak for yourself, Athel!" said Aunt Bessy, rather stiffly.
"I didn't mean you. I meant Addie."