The Hoyden by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (best value ebook reader TXT) 📖

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"Are you so sure?"

"Positive--_positive!"_

"What? Not even _one_ doubt?"

"Not one."

"What is your fear, then?" asks Margaret.

"That even if I went back to him, took up my old position, asked his guests to our house, and so on, that sooner or later I should quarrel with him a second time, and then this dreadful work would have to be done all over again."

"That would rest in your own hands. Of course, it is a risk, if, indeed, you mean what you say, Tita"--watching her closely--"that you do not care for Maurice. But"--anxiously--"at all events, you do not care for anyone else?"

"No--no--no" petulantly--"why should I? I think all men more trouble than they are worth."

"If that is so, and you are heart-whole, I think it your positive duty to live with your husband," says Margaret, with decision. "How can you hesitate, Tita? Are the vows you uttered at the altar nothing to you? Many a woman lives with a bad husband through conscientious motives, and----"

"I don't believe it," says Tita, who is evidently in one of her most wayward moods. "They go on living with their horrid husbands because they are afraid of what people will say about them. You know you said something about it yourself just now, and so did--_he;_ something about the world being disagreeable to any woman, however good, who is separated from the man she married."

Margaret gives up the argument.

"Well," says she, smiling, "at all events, Maurice isn't a horrid husband."

"You say that because he isn't yours," with a shrug.

"Come back here, you bad child," says Margaret, laughing now, "and listen to me for a little while longer. You know, Tita, darling, that I have your interest, and yours only, at heart. Promise me you will at least think of what Maurice proposes."

"Oh, I've promised _him_ that," says Tita, frowning.

"You have?" cries Margaret. "Oh, you _good_ girl! Come! that's right. And so you parted not altogether at war? How glad I am! And he--he was glad, too. He"--anxiously--"he said----"

"He said he was coming again to-morrow," with apparent disgust.

"To get your answer?"

"Oh, I suppose so! I don't know, I'm sure," with such a sharp gesture as proves to Margaret her patience has come to an end. "Let us forget it--put it from us--while we can." She laughs nervously. "You see what a temper I have! He will repent his bargain, I think--if I do consent. Come, let us talk of something else, Meg--of you."

"Of me?"

"What better subject? Tell me what Colonel Neilson was saying to you in that window this evening," pointing to the one farthest off.

"Nothing--nothing at all. He is so stupid," says Margaret, blushing crimson. "He really never sees me without proposing all over again, as if there was any good in it."

"And what did you say this time?"

Margaret grows confused.

"Really, dearest, I was so taken up thinking of you and Maurice," says she, with a first (and most flagrant) attempt at dissimulation, "that I believe I forgot to--to--say anything."

Tita gives way to a burst of irrepressible laughter.

"I like that," says she. "Well, at all events, by your own showing, you didn't say _no."_


CHAPTER XXVIII.

HOW TITA RECEIVES A BASKET OF FLOWERS AND AN ENTREATY; AND HOW SHE CEASES TO FIGHT AGAINST HER DESTINY.


It is quite early, barely eleven o'clock, and a most lovely morning. Tita and Margaret, who have just settled down in the latter's boudoir, presumably to write their letters, but actually to have a little gossip, are checked by the entrance of a servant, who brings something to Tita and lays it on the table beside her.

"With Sir Maurice Rylton's compliments," says the servant.

"What is it?" says Tita, when he has gone, with the air of one who instinctively knows, but would prefer to go on guessing about it.

"Not dynamite, assuredly," says Margaret. "What a delightful basket!"

"What can be inside it?"

"The best way to find that out is to open it," says Margaret, with abominable briskness. "Shall I cut these pretty ribbons, or will you?"

"No, _don't_ cut them," says Tita quickly.

She draws the basket towards her, and slowly and with care unties the true lover's knot of pale blue ribbon that fastens it.

"Flowers, I expect," says Margaret.

"But tied up like this?"

"That is because there is a letter inside it."

"You seem to know all about it," says Tita, at which Margaret grows a little red, and wishes, like the parrot, that she had not spoken.

"Yes; it is flowers," says Tita.

"Such flowers!" cries Margaret. And, indeed, it is a rare basketful of Nature's sweetest gifts that lies before them. Delicate reds, and waxen whites, and the tender greens of the waving fern. "How beautiful!" exclaims Margaret.

Tita has said nothing. But now she puts out her hand.

"What is that?" says she.

"Why, the letter," says Margaret, forgetting her late discomfiture in the excitement of this new discovery.

Tita draws it forth reluctantly. It is tied to a little plant--a tiny plant of pale forget-me-not.

"What can he have to write about?" says she. "Perhaps it is to say he is not coming to-day; let us hope so. But what does this plant mean?"

She opens the envelope with disdainful fingers. It does not, however, contain a letter, after all. It is only a verse scribbled on a card:

"If you will touch, and take, and pardon, What I can give; Take this, a flower, into your garden, And bid it live."

Neither of them speaks for a moment.

"It is a pretty message," says Margaret at last.

"Yes."

Tita's face is turned aside. Her hand is still resting on the table, the verse and the little plant within it.

"He will be coming soon," says Margaret again.

"Yes, I know."

"You will be kind to him, dearest?"

"That--I _don't_ know."

"Oh! I _think_ you do," says Margaret; "I think you must see that he----"

"Let me think it out, Meg," says Tita, turning a very pale face to hers. "When he comes tell him I am in the small drawing-room."

She kisses Margaret and leaves the room. The basket of flowers, too, she has left behind her. But Margaret can see that she has taken with her the tiny plant of forget-me-not.


* * * * * *


He comes quickly towards her, holding out his hand.

"Margaret said I should find you here," says he. Hope, mingled with great fear, is in his glance. He holds the hand she gives him. "Have you kept your promise?" he asks her. "Have you thought of it?"

"I am tired of thinking," says she, with a long sigh.

"And your decision?"

"Oh! it shall be as you wish," cries she, dragging her hand out of his, and walking backwards from him till she reaches the wall, where she stays, leaning against it as if glad of its support, and glancing at him from under her long lashes. "You shall have your own way. You have always had it. You will have it to the end, I suppose."

"You consent, then!" exclaims her.

"Ah! That is all you think of. To save appearances! You"--her breath coming quickly--"you care nothing for what _I_ am feeling----"

"Don't wrong me like that," says Rylton, interrupting her. "If you could read my heart you would know that it is of you alone I think. For you I have thought out everything. You shall be your own mistress---- I shall not interfere with you in any way. I ask you to be my wife, so far as entertaining our guests goes, and the arranging of the household, and that---- No more! You shall be free as air. Do you think that I do not know I have sinned towards you?" He breaks off in some agitation, and then goes on. "I tell you I shall not for one moment even question a wish of yours."

"I should not like that," says Tita sadly. "That would keep me as I was: always an outsider; a stranger; a guest in my own house."

Rylton walks to the window and back again. A stranger! _Had_ she felt like a stranger in her own house? It hurts him terribly.

"It was I who should have been the stranger," says he. "It was all yours--and yet--did I really make you so unhappy?"

There is something so cruel in his own condemnation of himself that Tita's heart melts.

"It is all over," says she. "It is at an end. If"--with a sad, strange little glance at him--"we must come together again, let us not begin the new life with recriminations. Perhaps I have been hard to you--Margaret says I have--and if so----" Tears rise in her eyes and choke her utterance. She turns aside from him, and drums with her fingers on the table near her. "I thought those flowers so pretty," says she.

"I didn't know what to send," returns he, in a voice as low as her own.

"I liked them."

"Did you?" He looks at her. "And yet you are not wearing one of them--not even a bud. I said to myself, when I was coming here, that if you wore one I should take hope from it."

"Flowers die," says she, with her eyes upon the ground.

"Cut flowers. But I sent you a little plant."

"Forget-me-not would not live in town."

"But we shall not live in town. You have promised to come to the country with me," says he quickly. "And even if this plant dies, another can grow--a new one. I told you that I bought a place. It--it is in the same county as Oakdean."

"Ah! Oakdean!" A pathetic look grows within her large eyes. She turns aside. "I _dread_ the country now that my old house is gone---- I----" Suddenly she gives way, and bursts into a storm of tears. "Everything seems gone!" cries she. "But if I _must_ seek a new home let me go to it at once. Don't let me think about it. Take me there as soon as ever you can."

"To-morrow," says Rylton, "if you wish."

"Yes, yes," feverishly, "to-morrow."

She is sobbing bitterly.

"Tita," says Rylton, who is now very pale, "if it costs you so much, I give up my plan. Stay with Margaret--stay where you like, only let me provide for you."

"No, I shall go with you," says Tita, making a violent effort to suppress her sobs. "It is arranged, I tell you. Only let me go _at once_. I cannot stand the thinking of it day by day."

"To-morrow, then, by the evening train; will that suit you?"

"Yes."

"I shall call for you here?"

"Yes."

"Remember our compact. You shall be as free as air."

"I know."

He goes to her, and, taking her head between his hands, kisses her forehead. He would have liked to take her in his arms and kiss her with all his heart, but something forbids him.

"Good-bye, Tita."

"Good-bye."

He has his hand upon her shoulder now.

"Do you know you have never once called me by