And what naturally should have been her first thoughts?
That she had ruthlessly refused a man who, as she
now knew, loved her well, and for whom she had always
felt at any rate the warmest friendship? Such
were not her thoughts, nor were they in any way akin
to this. They ran back instantly to years gone
by,—over long years, as her few years were
counted, and settled themselves on certain halcyon
days, in which she had dreamed that he had loved her,
and had fancied that she had loved him. How she
had schooled herself for those days since that, and
taught herself to know that her thoughts had been
over-bold! And now it had all come round.
The only man that she had ever liked had loved her.
Then there came to her a memory of a certain day,
in which she had been almost proud to think that Crosbie
had admired her, in which she had almost hoped that
it might be so; and as she thought of this she blushed,
and struck her foot twice upon the floor. “Dear
Lily,” she said to herself—“poor
Lily!” But the feeling which induced her then
to think of her sister had had no relation to that
which had first brought Crosbie into her mind.
And this man had loved her through it all,—this
priceless, peerless man,—this man who was
as true to the backbone as that other man had shown
himself to be false; who was as sound as the other
man had proved himself to be rotten. A smile
came across her face as she sat looking at the fire,
thinking of this. A man had loved her, whose
love was worth possessing. She hardly remembered
whether or no she had refused him or accepted him.
She hardly asked herself what she would do. As
to all that it was necessary that she should have many
thoughts, but the necessity did not press upon her
quite immediately. For the present, at any rate,
she might sit and triumph;—and thus triumphant
she sat there till the old nurse came in and told her
that her mother was waiting for her below.
CHAPTER XL
Preparations for the Wedding
The fourteenth of February was finally settled as
the day on which Mr Crosbie was to be made the happiest
of men. A later day had been at first named,
the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth having been suggested
as an improvement over the first week in March; but
Lady Amelia had been frightened by Crosbie’s
behaviour on that Sunday evening, and had made the
countess understand that there should be no unnecessary
delay. “He doesn’t scruple at that
kind of thing,” Lady Amelia had said in one
of her letters, showing perhaps less trust in the
potency of her own rank than might have been expected
from her. The countess, however, had agreed with
her, and when Crosbie received from his mother-in-law
a very affectionate epistle, setting forth all the
reasons which would make the fourteenth so much more
convenient a day than the twenty-eighth, he was unable
to invent an excuse for not being made happy a fortnight
earlier than the time named in the bargain. His
Copyrights
The Small House at Allington from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
