"So as to cut me off from you entirely?"
"No, indeed. The thought of seeing you again was too--too overwhelming
to be indulged in; knowing, as I did, that if you were the same to me,
it must be at this sad cost to you," and her eyes filled with tears.
"It is you who make it so, Ermine."
"No; it is the providence that has set me aside from the active work of
life. Pray do not go on, Colin, it is only giving us both useless pain.
You do not know what it costs me to deny you, and I feel that I must. I
know you are only acting on the impulse of generosity. Yes, I will say
so, though you think it is to please yourself," she added, with one of
those smiles that nothing could drive far from her lips, and which made
it infinitely harder to acquiesce in her denial.
"I will make you think so in time," he said. "Then I might tell you, you
had no right to please yourself," she answered, still with the same air
of playfulness; "you have got a brother, you know--and--yes, I hear you
growl; but if he is a poor old broken man out of health, it is the
more reason you should not vex him, nor hamper yourself with a helpless
commodity."
"You are not taking the way to make me forget what my brother has done
for us."
"How do you know that he did not save me from being a strong-minded
military lady! After all, it was absurd to expect people to look
favourably on our liking for one another, and you know they could not be
expected to know that there was real stuff in the affair. If there had
not been, we should have thought so all the same, you know, and been
quite as furious."
He could not help smiling, recollecting fury that, in the course of
these twelve years, he had seen evinced under similar circumstances by
persons who had consoled themselves before he had done pitying them.
"Still," he said gravely, "I think there was harshness."
"So do I, but not so much as I thought at that time, and--oh, surely
that is not Rachel Curtis? I told her I thought you would call."
"Intolerable!" he muttered between his teeth. "Is she always coming to
bore you?"
"She has been very kind, and my great enlivenment," said Ermine, "and
she can't be expected to know how little we want her. Oh, there, the
danger is averted! She must have asked if you were here."
"I was just thinking that she was the chief objection to Lady Temple's
kind wish of having you at Myrtlewood."
"Does Lady Temple know?" asked Ermine, blushing.