How could she say to him:—"I have never had the ghost of a love-affair in the whole of my colourless, but irreproachable, life. A mystic usage of my family of four sisters, a nervous invalid mother, and an absent-minded father, determined my status in early girlhood. I was to show a respectful interest in the love-affairs of my sisters, who were handsome and pretty and charming and attractive and piquantes, while I was relatively plain and backward, besides having an outcrop on one cheek which has since been successfully removed. I was not to presume upon my position as a sister to express opinions about these said love-affairs, because I was not supposed to know anything about such matters. They were not in my department. My rôle was a domestic one, and I had a high moral standpoint; which I would gladly have dispensed with, but the force of family tradition overpowered me. It has been a poor consolation to me to carry about this standpoint like a campstool to the houses of the friends I visit at intervals, now that my sisters are all married, and my mother has departed this life, and my father has married a Mrs. Dubosc, with whom I don't agree. I lead a life of constant resentment against unattached mankind, who decide, after critical inspection, that they won't, when I have really never asked them to. You and I have been more companionable—more like keeping company, as Lutwyche would say—than any man I ever came across, and I should like to be able to say to you that, even as you never met with Rosalind, even so I never met with Orlando, but without any phase of my career to correspond with the one you so delicately hinted at just now, in your own. For I fancied I read between your lines that your scheme of life had not been precisely that of an anchorite. Pray understand that I have never supposed it was so, and that I rather honour your attempt to indicate the fact to me without outraging my maidenly—old maidish, if you will—susceptibilities"?
It was because Miss Constance Dickenson, however improbable it may seem, had wanted to say all this and a great deal more, and could not see her way to any of it, that she had become dry and monosyllabic. It was because of this compulsory silence that she felt that even her brief:—"Why?" in answer to Mr. Pellew's suggestion that an Orlando must have come on her stage though no Rosalind had come on his, struck her after it had passed her lips as a false step.
He in his turn was at a loss to get something worded so as not to overstep his familiarity-licence. Rough-hewn, it might have run thus:—"Because no girl, as pretty as you must have been, fifteen or twenty years ago, ever goes without a lover in posse, though he may never work out as a husband in esse, nor even a fiancé." He did not see his way to polishing and finishing it so that it would be safe. He could manage nothing better than "Obviously!" He said it twice certainly, and threw away the end of his cigar to repeat it. But he might not have done this if he had not been so near departure.
Somehow, it left them both silent. Sauntering along on the new-fallen beechmast, struck by the gleams of a sunset that seemed to be giving satisfaction to the ringdoves overhead, it could not be necessary to prosecute the conversation. All the same, if it had paused on a different note, an incredibly slight incident that counted for something quite measurable in the judgment of each, might have had no importance whatever.
But really it was so slight an incident that the story is almost ashamed to mention it. It was this. An island of bracken, with briars in its confidence, not negotiable by skirts—especially in those days—must needs split a path of turf-velvet wide enough for acquaintances, into two paths narrow enough for lovers. Practically, the choice between walking in one of these at the risk of some little rabbit misinterpreting their relations, and going round the island, lay with the gentleman. The Hon. Percival did not mince the matter, as he might have done last week, but diminished his distance from his companion in order that one narrow pathway should accommodate both. It was just after they had passed the island that Miss Dickenson exclaimed:—"There's the carriage," and Gwen perceived their consciousness of its proximity. The last episode of the story comes abreast of the present one.
The story is ashamed of its own prolixity. But how is justice to be done to the gradual evolution of a situation if hard-and-fast laws are to be laid down, restricting the number of words that its chronicler shall employ? Condemn him by all means, but admit at least that every smallest incident of the foregoing narrative had its share of influence on the future of its actors.
It is true that nothing very crucial followed. For when, after the carriage had pulled up and interrupted the current of conversation, and gone on again leaving it doubtful how it should be resumed, it again stopped for the pedestrians to overtake it, it became morally incumbent on them to do so, and also prudent to accept its statement that it was nearly half-past six, and to take advantage of a lift that it offered. For Mr. Pellew must not miss that train. The carriage may have noticed that it never overtook the Archæological Congress, which must have walked very quick, unless indeed the two stragglers walked very slow.
Miss Dickenson must have dressed for dinner much quicker than they walked along the avenue. For when Mr. Pellew, after a short snack, on his way to put himself in the gig beside his traps, looked in at the drawing-room to see if there was anyone he had failed to say good-bye to, he found that lady very successfully groomed in spite of her alacrity, and suggesting surprise at its success. Fancy her being down before everyone else after all! Here is the conversation:
"Well, good-bye! I'll remember the book. I've enjoyed my visit enormously."