The Woman with One Hand, and Mr. Ely's Engagement

"What I say."

"By George, though, but it does!"

Miss Truscott leaned her head back in her chair. She put her hand before her mouth as if to hide a yawn. She closed her eyes. She looked more than half asleep.

"Then I will."

"Will what?"

"Say 'Yes.'"

"You mean that you will be my wife? It's a bargain, mind!"

"It is a bargain. That's just the proper word to use."

"That's all right. Then I'll send a wire to Ash to let him know it's done."

"Yes, send a wire up to town to let him know it's done."

Mr. Ely moved towards the house. From her voice and manner Miss Truscott still seemed more than half asleep; but hers was a curious kind of sleepiness, for in the corner of each of her closed eyelids there gleamed something that looked very like a drop of diamond dew. Prosaic people might have said it was a tear.

CHAPTER V

MR. ELY DEPARTS

Mr. Ely returned to town on the following morning, and Miss Truscott was an engaged young woman. The interval between the moment of her becoming engaged and the departure of the gentleman was not-we are rather at a loss for the proper word to use-let us put it, was not exactly so pleasant as it might have been.

Although the man and the maid had plighted troth they certainly did not seem like lovers; they scarcely even seemed to be friends. The position seemed to be a little strained. Mr. Ely noticed this as the day wore on. He resented it.

In the garden after dinner he relieved his mind. The lady was seated, the admirable Pompey on her knee, so engaged in reading as to appear wholly oblivious that the gentleman was in her neighbourhood. For some time Mr. Ely fidgeted about in silence. The lady did not appear even to notice that. At last he could keep still no longer.

"You seem very fond of reading?"

"I am." The lady did not even take her eyes off her book to answer him, but read tranquilly on.

"I hope I'm not in your way."

"Not at all"; which was true enough. He might have been miles away for all the notice the lady appeared to take of him.

"One has to come into the country to learn manners."

"One has to come into the country to do what?"

As if conscious that he was skating on thin ice, Mr. Ely endeavoured to retrace his steps.

"Considering that only this morning you promised to be my wife, I think that you might have something to say."

Partially closing the book, but keeping one slender finger within it to mark the place, the lady condescended to look up.

"Why should you think that?"

"I believe it is usual for persons in our situation to have something to say to each other, but I don't know, I'm sure."

The lady entirely closed her book and placed it on a little table at her side. "What shall we talk about?"

The gentleman was still. Under such circumstances the most gifted persons might have found it difficult to commence a conversation.

"Are you interested in questions of millinery?"

"In questions of millinery!"

"Or do you take a wider range, and take a living interest in the burning questions of the progress of revolution and the advance of man?"

Mr. Ely felt clear in his own mind that the lady was chaffing him, but he did not quite see his way to tell her so.

"I'm fond of common sense."

"Ah, but common sense is a term which conveys such different meanings. I suppose, that, in its strictest definition, common sense is the highest, rarest sense of all. I suppose that you use the term in a different way."

This was exasperating. Mr. Ely felt it was.

"I suppose you mean that I'm a fool."

"There again-who shall define folly? The noblest spirits of them all have been by the world called fools."

Miss Truscott gazed before her with a rapt intensity of vision, as though she saw the noble spirits referred to standing in the glow of the western sky.

"I must say you have nice ideas of sociability."

"I have had my ideas at times. I have dreamed of a social intercourse which should be perfect sympathy. But they were but dreams."

Mr. Ely held his peace. This sort of thing was not at all his idea of conversation. It is within the range of possibility to suspect that his idea of perfect conversation was perfect shop-an eternal reiteration of the ins-and-outs and ups-and-downs of stocks and shares. However that might be, it came to pass that neither of these two people went in a loverlike frame of mind to bed. But this acted upon each of them in different ways.

For instance, it was hours after Miss Truscott had retired to her chamber before the young lady placed herself between the sheets. For a long time she sat before the open window, looking out upon the star-lit sky. Then she began restlessly pacing to and fro. All her tranquillity seemed gone.

"I have been ill-mannered-and a fool!"

And again there was that hysteric interlacing of her hands which seemed to be a familiar trick of hers when her mind was much disturbed.

"I have made the greatest mistake of all. I have promised myself to a man I-loathe."

She shuddered when she arrived at that emphatic word.

"A man with whom I have not one single thing in common; a man who understands a woman as much as-less than Pompey does. I believe that selfish Pompey cares for me much more. A man whose whole soul is bound up in playing conjuring tricks with stocks and shares. And where are all my dreams of love? Oh! they have flown away!"

Then she threw herself upon the bed and cried.

"Oh, Willy! Willy! why have you been false? If you had been only true! I believe that I am so weak a thing that if you should call to me to-morrow, I would come."