We have sat down. I am not facing her. With
a complexion that serves one such ill turns as mine
does, one is not over-fond of facing people.
I am beside her. For a moment we are both silent.
“Well,” say I, presently, with an unintentional
tartness in my tone, “why do not you begin?
I am waiting to hear all about it! Begin!”
So Barbara begins.
“I am afraid,” she says, smiling all the
while, but growing as red as the bunch of late roses
in my breast, “that I looked horribly pleased!
One ought to look as if one did not care, ought not
one?”
“Ought one?” say I, with interest, then
beginning to laugh vociferously. “At least
you were not as bad as the old maid who late in life
received a very wealthy offer, and was so much elated
by it that she took off all her clothes, and kicked
her bonnet round the room!”
Barbara laughs.
“No, I was not quite so bad as that.”
“And how did he do it?” pursue I, inquisitively.
“Did he write or speak”
“He spoke.”
“And what did he say? How did he word it?
Ah!”—(with a sigh)—“I
suppose you will not tell me that?”
She has abandoned her chair, and has fallen on her
knees before me, hiding her face in my lap. Delicious
waves of color, like the petals of a pink sweet-pea,
are racing over her cheeks and throat.
“Was ever any one known to tell it?” she
says, indistinctly.
“Yes,” reply I, “I was.
I told you what Roger said, word for word—all
of you!”
“Did you?”—(with an
accent of astonished incredulity).
“Yes,” say I, “do not you remember?
I promised I would before I went into the drawing-room
that day, and, when I came out, I wanted the boys
to let me off, but they would not.”
A pause.
“I wish,” say I, a little impatiently,
“that you would look up! Why need you mind
if you are rather red? What do I
matter? and so—and so— you are
pleased!”
“Pleased!”
She has raised her head as I bid her, and on her face
there is a sort of scorn at the poverty and inadequacy
of the expression, and yet she replaces it with no
other; only the sapphire of her eyes is dimmed and
made more tender by rising tears.
Clearly we were never meant to be joyful, we humans!
In any bliss greater than our wont, we can only hang
out, to demonstrate our felicity, the sign and standard
of woe.
“Nancy!”—(taking my hand, and
looking at me with wistful earnestness)—
“do you think it can last? Did ever
any one feel as I do for long?”
“I do not know—how can I tell?”
reply I, discomfortably, as I absently eye the two
halves of my paper-knife, which, after having given
one or two warning cracks, has now snapped in the
middle. Then Roger enters, and our talk ends.
