“I am sure of their approval. Father will do what mother says, and she has always said that she would never interfere with me in—in—such a thing.”
“Perhaps you would like all the more, then, to show her the deference of waiting for her consent.”
Imogene started as if stopped short in swift career; it was not hard for Colville to perceive that she saw for the first time the reverse side of a magnanimous impulse. She suddenly turned to him.
“I think Mrs. Bowen is right,” he said gravely, in answer to the eyes of Imogene. He continued, with a flicker of his wonted mood: “You must consider me a little in the matter. I have some small shreds of self-respect about me somewhere, and I would rather not be put in the attitude of defying your family, or ignoring them.”
“No,” said Imogene, in the same effect of arrest.
“When it isn’t absolutely necessary,” continued Colville. “Especially as you say there will be no opposition.”
“Of course,” Imogene assented; and in fact what he said was very just, and he knew it; but he could perceive that he had suffered loss with her. A furtive glance at Mrs. Bowen did not assure him that he had made a compensating gain in that direction, where, indeed, he had no right to wish for any.
“Well, then,” the girl went on, “it shall be so. We will wait. It will only be waiting. I ought to have thought of you before; I make a bad beginning,” she said tremulously. “I supposed I was thinking of you; but I see that I was only thinking of myself.” The tears stood in her eyes. Mrs. Bowen, quite overlooked in this apology, slipped from the room.
“Imogene!” said Colville, coming toward her.
She dropped herself upon his shoulder. “Oh, why, why, why am I so miserable?”
“Miserable, Imogene!” he murmured, stroking her beautiful hair.
“Yes, yes! Utterly miserable! It must be because I’m unworthy of you—unequal every way. If you think so, cast me off at once. Don’t be weakly merciful!”
The words pierced his heart. “I would give the world to make you happy, my child!” he said, with perfidious truth, and a sigh that came from the bottom of his soul. “Sit down here by me,” he said, moving to the sofa; and with whatever obscure sense of duty to her innocent self-abandon, he made a space between them, and reduced her embrace to a clasp of the hand she left with him. “Now tell me,” he said, “what is it makes you unhappy?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she answered, drying her averted eyes. “I suppose I am overwrought from not sleeping, and from thinking how we should arrange it all.”
“And now that it’s all arranged, can’t you be cheerful again?”
“Yes.”
“You’re satisfied with the way we’ve arranged it? Because if—”
“Oh, perfectly—perfectly!” She hastily interrupted. “I wouldn’t have it otherwise. Of course,” she added, “it wasn’t very pleasant having someone else suggest what I ought to have thought of myself, and seem more delicate about you than I was.”
“Someone else?”
“You know! Mrs. Bowen.”
“Oh! But I couldn’t see that she was anxious to spare me. It occurred to me that she was concerned about your family.”
“It led up to the other! it’s all the same thing.”
“Well, even in that case, I don’t see why you should mind it. It was certainly very friendly of her, and I know that she has your interest at heart entirely.”
“Yes; she knows how to make it seem so.”
Colville hesitated in bewilderment. “Imogene!” he cried at last, “I don’t understand this. Don’t you think Mrs. Bowen likes you?”
“She detests me.”
“Oh, no, no, no! That’s too cruel an error. You mustn’t think that. I can’t let you. It’s morbid. I’m sure that she’s devotedly kind and good to you.”
“Being kind and good isn’t liking. I know what she thinks. But of course I can’t expect to convince you of it; no one else could see it.”
“No!” said Colville, with generous fervour. “Because it doesn’t exist and you mustn’t imagine it. You are as sincerely and unselfishly regarded in this house as you could be in your own home. I’m sure of that. I know Mrs. Bowen. She has her little worldlinesses and unrealities of manner, but she is truth and loyalty itself. She would rather die than be false, or even unfair. I knew her long ago—”
“Yes,” cried the girl, “long before you knew me!”
“And I know her to be the soul of honour,” said Colville, ignoring the childish outburst. “Honour—like a man’s,” he added. “And, Imogene, I want you to promise me that you’ll not think of her any more in that way. I want you to think of her as faithful and loving to you, for she is so. Will you do it?”
Imogene did not answer him at once. Then she turned upon him a face of radiant self-abnegation. “I will do anything you tell me. Only tell me things to do.”
The next time he came he again saw Mrs. Bowen alone before Imogene appeared. The conversation was confined to two sentences.
“Mr. Colville,” she said, with perfectly tranquil point, while she tilted a shut book to and fro on her knee, “I will thank you not to defend me.”
Had she overheard? Had Imogene told her? He answered, in a fury of resentment for her ingratitude that stupefied him. “I will never speak of you again.”
Now they were enemies; he did not know how or why, but he said to himself, in the bitterness of his heart, that it was better so; and when Imogene appeared, and Mrs. Bowen vanished, as she did without another word to him, he folded the girl in a vindictive embrace.
“What is the matter?” she
