Not so Ida. In the two years that had passed she had lived ten, and her face showed it. Her beauty of feature remained, but it was a beauty of outline, not of colour and ever-varying tint. No one would take her for Juliet’s twin-sister now, no one would ask her to stand as a model for the goddess of perpetual youth, although she might well have posed as a classic embodiment of stately dignity.
As they had talked they had wandered to the edge of the garden, and were now brought to a standstill by the little iron gate which separated it from the park.
It was a glorious evening. July was at its greenest and best. The sun had gone, the afterglow was dying, in a wonderful succession of opaline tints, into a pale green sky that threw into bold and sombre relief the grand old oaks and elms of the park. The air was alive with insect life. Birds were fluting to each other daintily and dreamily from out their leafy hiding-places, and ever and anon the rustle of the bracken below told that the rabbits were astir for their evening gambols.
It was the time, the place for confidences. Juliet felt it, and was the first to break the silence.
“I wish,” she said, speaking very slowly as if she were thinking out her thoughts as she spoke them, “that you would tell me what it is poor Clive has done that you should keep him at arm’s length as you do? Why won’t you see him?”
Ida’s pale face grew a shade paler.
“You pain me in asking these questions,” she said, in a low tone; “don’t you know I have begged you again and again never to allude to the past?”
“Yes; but here’s the difficulty! I can’t allude to my future without alluding to your past. I’ve told you over and over again, and I thoroughly mean it, that to the very end of my life I intend to be your shadow. If you die an old maid, I shall die an old maid. If you marry, I will marry—same day, same church, everything precisely the same, except, the bridegroom.”
Ida’s eyes swam with tears.
“My darling,” she said, brokenly, “your future will, I hope, be a far brighter one than mine. You haven’t that on your conscience that I have on mine.”
“Ah, well, there’s one thing, at any rate, I wouldn’t have on my conscience if I were you, and that is the responsibility of ruining Clive Redway’s health and happiness. He looked frightfully ill when I saw him last week.”
“Ill!”
“Oh, yes; halfway into a decline. He said he was going away, and I suppose it is to Madeira where all the consumptive people go. And I dare say he’ll never get there, but will die on the voyage, and be buried in the sea.”
A great tear fell on Juliet’s hand as it rested on the rail of the iron gate. Juliet felt that her words were telling, and went on even more energetically.
“And he has a mother, you know, and she’s not so young as she was, and I dare say it’ll kill her as well. And she’s such a darling—has such a lovely smile, and such beautiful white hair—”
“Oh stop, stop, Juliet, I can’t stand it!”
“Oh, well, if you can’t bear to talk about it, how will they bear to do it—die, I mean?” said Juliet, with a little confusion of meaning. “And what poor Mr. Redway will do, with his wife and son both dead, I can’t imagine. Why, his life won’t be worth having, and I dare say he’ll do something foolish—marry again, or go to the Arctic regions and shoot Eskimo—reindeer, I mean—”
“Juliet,” interrupted Ida, “tell me honestly, is Clive ill, or looking ill? Don’t torture me in this way.”
Juliet gave a little laugh.
“You can judge for yourself, if you like,” she said, calmly. “Do you see that dark figure coming towards us from under the beeches? That is Clive Redway.”
“Juliet! this is your doing,” cried Ida, indignantly.
“Why, of course,” answered Juliet, unabashed. “I should be very angry if it were anyone else’s. Since I have put father and Peggy into their right places, I do all the inviting that has to be done. Young men and maidens, old men and children—none of them dare come near the house unless I invite them.”
And before Ida had time to recover from her surprise, Juliet had disappeared, and there was Clive leaning over the gate, looking down into her eyes, and saying:
“I have come for the last time to learn my fate. Will you give me five minutes—just five minutes—I don’t ask for more?”
“Lovers’ hours are long, though seeming short.” Lady Culvers, with a start, awakened from her after-dinner nap, and looked up at the clock on a corner bracket. Its hands pointed to half-past two! That could not possibly be the hour. She rubbed her eyes, doubting their evidence.
“No, that’s not the right time,” said Juliet, coming out of a shadowy corner of the room. “Time was going so slowly I thought I’d jog it on a little, and so put the hands forward an hour or so.”
“My dear love! Then what is the time? And where is Ida?”
“Well, judging from my own feelings, I should think it was going on for sunrise. I seem to have been sitting here for half a day, at least, doing nothing.”
“And on the tiptoe of expectation,” she added to herself, sotto voce.
“But where—where is Ida?” repeated Lady Culvers.
And Lord Culvers, entering the room at that moment, echoed her question.
“Ida at the present moment,” answered the ever-ready Juliet, “is engaged with a professor of dancing—to whom
