I shall go home about the 14th. They want me to stay, but I shall have been away quite long enough. I don’t know whether people ought to go from home at all after a certain age. I get cross because I can’t have the sort of chair I like to sit on; and then they don’t put any green tea into the pot, and I don’t like to ask to have any made, as I doubt whether they have any green tea in the house. And I find it bad to be among invalids with whom, indeed, I can sympathise, but for whom I cannot pretend that I feel any great affection. As we grow old we become incapable of new tenderness, and rather resent the calls that are made upon us for pity. The luxury of devotion to misery is as much the privilege of the young as is that of devotion to love.
Write soon, dearest; and remember that the best news I can have, will be tidings as to the day fixed for your marriage. And remember, too, that I won’t have any question about your being married at Bullhampton. It would be quite improper. He must come to Loring; and I needn’t say how glad I shall be to see the Fenwicks. Parson John will expect to marry you, but Mr. Fenwick might come and assist.
It was not the entreaty made by her aunt that an early day should be fixed for the marriage which made Mary Lowther determine that she would yet once more attempt to drag the wagon. She could have withstood such entreaty as that, and, had the letter gone no further, would probably have replied to it by saying that no day could be fixed at all. But, with the letter there came an assurance that Walter Marrable had forgotten her, was about to marry Edith Brownlow, and that therefore all ideas of love and truth and sympathy and joint beating of mutual hearts, with the rest of it, might be thrown to the winds. She would marry Harry Gilmore, and take care that he had good dinners, and would give her mind to flannel petticoats and coal for the poor of Bullhampton, and would altogether come down from the pedestal which she had once striven to erect for herself. From that high but tottering pedestal, propped up on shafts of romance and poetry, she would come down; but there would remain for her the lower, firmer standing block, of which duty was the sole support. It was no doubt most unreasonable that any such change should come upon her in consequence of her aunt’s letter. She had never for a moment told herself that Walter Marrable could ever be anything to her, since that day on which she had by her own deed liberated him from his troth; and, indeed, had done more than that, had forced him to accept that liberation. Why then should his engagement with another woman have any effect with her either in one direction or in the other? She herself had submitted to a new engagement—had done so before he had shown any sign of being fickle. She could not therefore be angry with him. And yet, because he could be fickle, because he could do that very thing which she had openly declared her purpose of doing, she persuaded herself—for a week or two—that any sacrifice made to him would be a sacrifice to folly, and a neglect of duty.
At this time, during this week or two, there came to her direct from the jewellers in London, a magnificent set of rubies—earrings, brooch, bracelets, and necklace. The rubies she had seen before, and knew that they had belonged to Mr. Gilmore’s mother. Mrs. Fenwick had told him that the setting was so old that no lady could wear them now, and there had been a presentiment that they would be forthcoming in a new form. Mary had said that, of course, such ornaments as these would come into her hands only when she became Mrs. Gilmore. Mrs. Fenwick had laughed and told her that she did not understand the romantic generosity of her lover. And now the jewellery had come to her at the parsonage without a word from Gilmore, and was spread out in its pretty cases on the vicarage drawing-room table. Now, if ever, must she say that she could not do as she had promised.
“Mary,” said Mrs. Fenwick, “you must go up to him tomorrow, and tell him how noble he is.”
Mary waited, perhaps, for a whole minute before she answered. She would willingly have given the jewels away forever and ever, so that they might not have been there now to trouble her. But she did answer at last, knowing, as she did so, that her last chance was gone.
“He is noble,” she said, slowly; “and I will go and tell him so. I’ll go now, if it is not too late.”
“Do, do. You’ll be sure to find him.” And Mrs. Fenwick, in her enthusiasm, embraced her friend and kissed her.
Mary put on her hat and walked off at once through the garden and across the fields, and into the Privets; and close to the house she met her lover. He did not see her till he heard her step, and then turned short round, almost as though fearing something.
“Harry,” she said, “those jewels have come. Oh, dear. They are not mine yet. Why did you have them sent to me?”
There was something in the word yet, or in her tone as she spoke it, which made his heart leap as it had never leaped before.
“If they’re not yours, I don’t know whom they belong to,” he said. And his eye was bright, and his voice almost shook with emotion.
“Are you
