She betook herself to the room that had once been Mr. Sharnall’s, but was now distressingly empty and forlorn, and there finding writing materials, sat down to compose an answer to Westray’s letter. She knew its contents thoroughly well, she knew its expressions almost by heart, yet she spread it out on the table before her, and read and reread it as many times as if it were the most difficult of cryptograms.
“Dearest Anastasia,” it began, and she found a grievance in the very first word, “Dearest.” What right had he to call her “Dearest”? She was one of those unintelligible females who do not shower superlatives on every chance acquaintance. She must, no doubt, have been callous as judged by modern standards, or at least, singularly unimaginative, for among her few correspondents she had not one whom she addressed as “dearest.” No, not even her aunt, for at such rare times of absence from home as she had occasion to write to Miss Joliffe, “My dear Aunt Euphemia” was the invocation.
It was curious that this same word “Dearest” had occasioned Westray also considerable thought and dubiety. Should he call her “Dearest Anastasia,” or “Dear Miss Joliffe”? The first sounded too forward, the second too formal. He had discussed this and other details with his mother, and the die had at last fallen on “Dearest.” At the worst such an address could only be criticised as proleptic, since it must be justified almost immediately by Anastasia’s acceptance of his proposal.
Dearest Anastasia—for dearest you are and ever will be to me—I feel sure that your heart will go out to meet my heart in what I am saying; that your kindness will support me in the important step which has now to be taken.
Anastasia shook her head, though there was no one to see her. There was a suggestion of fate overbearing prudence in Westray’s words, a suggestion that he needed sympathy in an unpleasant predicament, that jarred on her intolerably.
I have known you now a year, and know that my happiness is centred in you; you too have known me a year, and I trust that I have read aright the message that your eyes have been sending to me.
“For I shall happiest be tonight,
Or saddest in the town;
Heaven send I read their message right,
Those eyes of hazel brown.”
Anastasia found space in the press of her annoyance to laugh. It was more than a smile, it was a laugh, a quiet little laugh to herself, which in a man would have been called a buckle. Her eyes were not hazel brown, they were no brown at all; but then brown rhymed with town, and after all the verse might perhaps be a quotation, and must so be taken only to apply to the situation in general. She read the sentence again, “I have known you now a year; you too have known me a year.” Westray had thought this poetic insistence gave a touch of romance, and balanced the sentence; but to Anastasia it seemed the reiteration of a platitude. If he had known her a year, then she had known him a year, and to a female mind the sequitur was complete.
Have I read the message right, dearest? Is your heart my own?
Message? What message did he speak of? What message did he imagine she had wished to give him with her eyes? He had stared at her persistently for weeks past, and if her eyes sometimes caught his, that was only because she could not help it; except when between whiles she glanced at him of set purpose, because it amused her to see how silly a man in love may look.
Say that it is; tell me that your heart is my own (and the request seemed to her too preposterous to admit even of comment).
I watch your present, dear Anastasia, with solicitude. Sometimes I think that you are even now exposed to dangers of whose very existence you know nothing; and sometimes I look forward with anxiety to the future, so undecipherable, if misfortune or death should overtake your aunt. Let me help you to decipher this riddle. Let me be your shield now, and your support in the days to come. Be my wife, and give me the right to be your protector. I am detained in London by business for some days more; but I shall await your answer here with overwhelming eagerness, yet, may I say it? not without hope.
She folded the letter up with much deliberation, and put it back into its envelope. If Westray had sought far and wide for means of damaging his own cause, he could scarcely have found anything better calculated for that purpose than these last paragraphs. They took away much of that desire to spare, to make unpleasantness as little unpleasant as may be, which generally accompanies a refusal. His sententiousness was unbearable. What right had he to advise before he knew whether she would listen to him? What were these dangers to which she was even now exposed, and from which Mr. Westray was to shield her? She asked herself the question formally, though she knew the answer all the while. Her own heart had told her enough of late, to remove all difficulty in reading between Mr. Westray’s lines. A jealous man is, if possible, more contemptible than a jealous woman. Man’s greater strength postulates a broader mind and wider outlook; and if he fail in these, his failure is more conspicuous than woman’s. Anastasia had traced to jealousy the origin of Westray’s enigmatic remarks; but if she was strong enough to hold him ridiculous for his pains, she was also weak enough to take a woman’s pleasure in having excited the interest of the man she ridiculed.
She laughed
