"Yes," said Mary; "he has gone."

"And will not come back again?" Then she looked into his face,--oh!

so wistfully. "When did it happen?"

"When my father was on his death-bed. He had come sooner than that; but then it was that he went. I think, Mr Whittlestaff, that I never ought to marry any one after that, and therefore it is that I have told you."

"You are a good girl, Mary."

"I don't know about that. I think that I ought to deceive you at least in nothing."

"You should deceive no one."

"No, Mr Whittlestaff." She answered him ever so meekly; but there was running in her mind a feeling that she had not deceived any one, and that she was somewhat hardly used by the advice given to her.

"He has gone altogether?" he asked again.

"I do not know where he is,--whether he be dead or alive."

"But if he should come back?"

She only shook her head;--meaning him to understand that she could say nothing of his purposes should he come back. He had made her no offer. He had said that if he returned he would come first to Norwich. There had been something of a promise in this; but oh, so little! And she did not dare to tell him that hitherto she had lived upon that little.

"I do not think that you should remain single for ever on that account. How long is it now since Mr Gordon went?"

There was something in the tone in which he mentioned Mr Gordon's name which went against the grain with Mary. She felt that he was spoken of almost as an enemy. "I think it is three years since he went."

"Three years is a long time. Has he never written?"

"Not to me. How should he write? There was nothing for him to write about."

"It has been a fancy."

"Yes;--a fancy." He had made this excuse for her, and she had none stronger to make for herself.

He certainly did not think the better of her in that she had indulged in such a fancy; but in truth his love was sharpened by the opposition which this fancy made. It had seemed to him that his possessing her would give a brightness to his life, and this brightness was not altogether obscured by the idea that she had ever thought that she had loved another person. As a woman she was as lovable as before, though perhaps less admirable. At any rate he wanted her, and now she seemed to be more within his reach than she had been. "The week has pa.s.sed by, Mary, and I suppose that now you can give me an answer." Then she found that she was in his power. She had told him her story, as though with the understanding that if he would take her with her "fancy," she was ready to surrender herself.

"Am I not to have an answer now?"

"I suppose so."

"What is it to be?"

"If you wish for me, I will be yours."

"And you will cease to think of Mr Gordon?"

"I shall think of him; but not in a way that you would begrudge me."

"That will suffice. I know that you are honest, and I will not ask you to forget him altogether. But there had better be no speaking of him. It is well that he should be banished from your mind. And now, dearest, dearest love, give me your hand." She put her hand at once into his. "And a kiss." She just turned herself a little round, with her eyes bent upon the ground. "Nay; there must be a kiss." Then he bent over her, and just touched her cheek. "Mary, you are now all my own." Yes;--she was now all his own, and she would do for him the best in her power. He had not asked for her love, and she certainly had not given it. She knew well how impossible it would be that she should give him her love. "I know you are disturbed," he said. "I wish also for a few minutes to think of it all." Then he turned away from her, and went up the garden walk by himself.

She, slowly loitering, went into the house alone, and seated herself by the open window in her bed-chamber. As she sat there she could see him up the long walk, going and returning. As he went his hands were folded behind his back, and she thought that he appeared older than she had ever remarked him to be before. What did it signify? She had undertaken her business in life, and the duties she thought would be within her power. She was sure that she would be true to him, as far as truth to his material interests was concerned. His comforts in life should be her first care. If he trusted her at all, he should not become poorer by reason of his confidence. And she would be as tender to him as the circ.u.mstances would admit. She would not begrudge him kisses if he cared for them. They were his by all the rights of contract. He certainly had the best of the bargain, but he should never know how much the best of it he had. He had told her that there had better be no speaking of John Gordon. There certainly should be none on her part. She had told him that she must continue to think of him. There at any rate she had been honest. But he should not see that she thought of him.

Then she endeavoured to a.s.sure herself that this thinking would die out. Looking round the world, her small world, how many women there were who had not married the men they had loved first! How few, perhaps, had done so! Life was not good-natured enough for smoothness such as that. And yet did not they, as a rule, live well with their husbands? What right had she to expect anything better than their fate? Each poor insipid dame that she saw, toddling on with half-a-dozen children at her heels, might have had as good a John Gordon of her own as was hers. And each of them might have sat on a summer day, at an open window, looking out with something, oh, so far from love, at the punctual steps of him who was to be her husband.

Then her thoughts turned, would turn, could not be kept from turning, to John Gordon. He had been to her the personification of manliness.

That which he resolved to do, he did with an iron will. But his manners to all women were soft, and to her seemed to have been suffused with special tenderness. But he was chary of his words,--as he had even been to her. He had been the son of a banker at Norwich; but, just as she had become acquainted with him, the bank had broke, and he had left Oxford to come home and find himself a ruined man.

But he had never said a word to her of the family misfortune. He had been six feet high, with dark hair cut very short, somewhat full of sport of the roughest kind, which, however, he had abandoned instantly. "Things have so turned out," he had once said to Mary, "that I must earn something to eat instead of riding after foxes."

She could not boast that he was handsome. "What does it signify?" she had once said to her step-mother, who had declared him to be stiff, upsetting, and ugly. "A man is not like a poor girl, who has nothing but the softness of her skin to depend upon." Then Mrs Lawrie had declared to him that "he did no good coming about the house,"--and he went away.

Why had he not spoken to her? He had said that one word, promising that if he returned he would come to Norwich. She had lived three years since that, and he had not come back. And her house had been broken up, and she, though she would have been prepared to wait for another three years,--though she would have waited till she had grown grey with waiting,--she had now fallen into the hands of one who had a right to demand from her that she should obey him. "And it is not that I hate him," she said to herself. "I do love him. He is all good. But I am glad that he has not bade me not to think of John Gordon."

CHAPTER V.

"I SUPPOSE IT WAS A DREAM."

It seemed to her, as she sat there at the window, that she ought to tell Mrs Baggett what had occurred. There had been that between them which, as she thought, made it inc.u.mbent on her to let Mrs Baggett know the result of her interview with Mr Whittlestaff. So she went down-stairs, and found that invaluable old domestic interfering materially with the comfort of the two younger maidens. She was determined to let them "know what was what," as she expressed it.

"You oughtn't to be angry with me, because I've done nothing," said Jane the housemaid, sobbing.

"That's just about it," said Mrs Baggett. "And why haven't you done nothing? Do you suppose you come here to do nothing? Was it doing nothing when Eliza tied down them strawberries without putting in e'er a drop of brandy? It drives me mortial mad to think what you young folks are coming to."

"I ain't a-going anywhere, Mrs Baggett, because of them strawberries being tied down which, if you untie them, as I always intended, will have the sperrits put on them as well now as ever. And as for your going mad, Mrs Baggett, I hope it won't be along of me."

"Drat your imperence."

"I ain't imperence at all. Here's Miss Lawrie, and she shall say whether I'm imperence."

"Mrs Baggett, I want to speak to you, if you'll come into the other room," said Mary.

"You are imperent, both of you. I can't say a word but I'm taken up that short that--. They've been and tied all the jam down, so that it'll all go that mouldy that n.o.body can touch it. And then, when I says a word, they turns upon me." Then Mrs Baggett walked out of the kitchen into her own small parlour, which opened upon the pa.s.sage just opposite the kitchen door. "They was a-going to be opened this very afternoon," said Eliza, firing a parting shot after the departing enemy.

"Mrs Baggett, I've got to tell you," Mary began.

"Well!"

"He came to me for an answer, as he said he would."

"Well!"

"And I told him it should be as he would have it."

"Of course you would. I knew that."

"You told me that it was your duty and mine to give him whatever he wanted."