That Girl in Black; and, Bronzie

“Oh, dear,” the girl ejaculated, her usually bright, not to say jolly-looking countenance clouding over as she spoke, “oh, dear, I’m so sorry for the Selbys – for Mrs Selby particularly. Just fancy, doesn’t it seem awful – her brother’s dying.”

She glanced round the breakfast-table for sympathy: various expressions of it reached her.

“That fellow I found in the grounds at that place, is it?” inquired Mr Fforde. “I’m not surprised, he did look pretty bad, and he would walk home, and he hadn’t even a parasol.”

“Conrad, how can you be so unfeeling? I perfectly detest that horrid trick of joking about everything,” said in sharp, indignant tones a young lady seated opposite him. It was Lady Margaret. Several people looked up in surprise.

“Beginning in good time,” murmured a man near the end of the table.

“Why, do you believe in that? I don’t,” replied his companion in the same low tone.

Conrad looked across the table at his cousin in surprise.

“Come now, Maisie,” he said, “you make me feel quite shy, scolding me so in company. And I’m sure I didn’t mean to say anything witty at the poor chap’s expense. If I did, it was quite by mistake I assure you.”

“Anything ‘witty’ from you would be that, I can quite believe,” Lady Margaret replied, smiling a little. But the smile was a feeble and forced one. Conrad saw, if no one else did, that his cousin was thoroughly put out, and he felt repentant, though he scarcely knew why.

Half an hour later Lord Southwold and his daughter were talking together in the sitting-room, where the former had been breakfasting in invalid fashion alone.

“I would promise to be home to-morrow, or the day after at latest, papa,” Lady Margaret was saying; “Mrs Englewood will be very pleased to have me, I know, even at the shortest notice, for last week when I wrote saying I feared it would be impossible, she was very disappointed.”

“Very well, my dear, only don’t stay with her longer than that, for you know we have engagements,” and Lord Southwold sighed a little.

Margaret sighed too.

“My darling,” said her father, “don’t look so depressed. I didn’t mean to grumble.”

“Oh no, papa. It isn’t you at all. I shall be glad to be at home again; won’t you? Thank you very much for letting me go round by town.”

Mrs Englewood’s drawing-room – but looking very different from the last time we saw it. Mrs Englewood herself, with a more anxious expression than usual on her pleasant face, was sitting by the open window, through which, however, but little air found its way, for it was hot, almost stifling weather.

“It is really a trial to have to come back to town before it is cooler,” she was saying to herself, as the door opened and Lady Margaret, in summer travelling gear, came in.

“So you are really going, dear Maisie,” said her hostess. “I do wish you could have waited another day.”

“But,” said Maisie, “you will let me know at once what you hear from Mrs Selby. I cannot help being unhappy, Gertrude, and, of course, what you have told me has made me still more self-reproachful, and – and ashamed.”

She was very pale, but a sudden burning blush overspread her face as she said the last words.

“I do so hope he will recover,” she added, trying to speak lightly, “though if he does I earnestly hope I shall never meet him again.”

“Even if I succeed in making him understand your side, and showing him how generously you regret having misjudged him?” said Mrs Englewood. “I don’t see that there need be any enmity between you.”

“Not enmity, oh no; but still less, friendship,” said Maisie. “I just trust we shall never meet again. Good-bye, dear Gertrude: I am so glad to have told you all. You will let me know what you hear?” and she kissed Mrs Englewood affectionately.

“Good-bye, dear child. I am glad you have not a long journey before you. Stretham will take good care of you. You quite understand that I can do nothing indirectly – it will only be when I see him himself that I can tell him how sorry you have been.”

“Sorry and ashamed, be sure to say ‘ashamed,’” said Lady Margaret: “yes, of course, it can only be if – if he gets better or you see him yourself.”

Two or three days later came a letter to Lady Margaret from Mrs Englewood, inclosing one which that lady had just received from Mrs Selby. Her brother, she allowed for the first time, was out of danger, but “terribly weak.” And at intervals during the next few weeks the girl heard news of Mr Norreys’ recovery. And “I wonder,” she began to say to herself, “I wonder if Gertrude has seen him, or will be seeing him soon.”

But this hope, if hope it should be called, was doomed to disappointment. Late in October came another letter from her friend.

“I am sorry,” wrote Mrs Englewood, “that I see no probability of my meeting Mr Norreys for a long time. He is going abroad. After all, your paths in life are not likely to cross each other again. Perhaps it is best to leave things.”

But the tears filled Maisie’s eyes as she read. “I should have liked him to know I had come to do him justice,” she thought.

She did not understand Mrs Englewood’s view of the matter.

“It would be cruel,” Gertrude had said to herself, “to tell him how she blames herself, and how my showing her Mrs Selby’s letter had cleared him. It would only bring it all up again when he has doubtless begun to forget it.”

Nevertheless, Despard did not leave England without knowing how completely Lady Margaret had retracted her cruel words, and how bitterly she regretted them.

Time passes quickly, we are told, when we are hard at work. And doubtless this is true while the time in question is the present. But to look back upon time of which every day and every hour have been fully occupied, gives somewhat the feeling of a closely-printed volume when one has finished reading it. It seems even longer than in anticipation. To Despard Norreys, when at the end of two busy years he found himself again in England, it appeared as if he had been absent five or six times as long as was really the case.

He had been a week in England, and was still detained in town by details connected with the work he had successfully accomplished. He was under promise to his sister to run down to Markerslea the first day it should be possible, and time meanwhile hung somewhat heavily on his hands. The waters had already closed over his former place in society, and he did not regret it. Still there were friends whom he was glad to meet again, and so he not unwillingly accepted some of the invitations that began to find him out.

One evening, after dining at the house of the friend whose influence had obtained for him the appointment which had just expired, he accompanied the ladies of the family to an evening party in the neighbourhood. He had never been in the house before; the faces about him were unfamiliar. Feeling a little “out of it,” he strolled into a small room where a select quartette was absorbed at whist, and seated himself in a corner somewhat out of the glare of light, which, since his illness, rather painfully affected his eyes.

Suddenly the thought of Maisie Fforde as he had last seen her seemed to rise before him as in a vision.

“I wonder if she is married,” he said to himself. “Sure to be so, I should think. Yet I should probably have heard of it.”

And even as the words formed themselves in his mind, a still familiar voice caught his ear.

“Thank you. Yes, this will do nicely. I will wait here till Mabel is ready to go.”

And a lady – a girl, he soon saw – came forward into the room towards the corner where he was sitting. He rose at once; she approached him quickly, then with a sudden, incoherent exclamation, made as if she would have drawn back. But it was too late; she could not, if she wished, have pretended she did not see him.

“Mr Norreys,” she began; “I had no idea – ”

“That I was in England,” he said. “No, I have only just returned. Pardon me for having startled you, Miss Fforde – Lady Margaret, I mean. I on my side had no idea of meeting you here or – ”

“Or you would not have come,” she in her turn interrupted him with. “Thank you; you are frank at all events,” she added haughtily.

He turned away. There was perhaps some involuntary suggestion of reproach in his manner, for hers changed.

“No,” she said. “I am very wrong. Please stay for two minutes, and listen to me. I have hoped and prayed that I might never meet you again, but at the same time I made a vow – a real vow,” she went on girlishly, “that if I did so I would swallow my pride, and – and ask you to forgive me. There now – I have said it. That is all. Will you, Mr Norreys?”

He glanced round; the whist party was all unconscious of the rest of the world still —

“Will you not sit down for a moment, Lady Margaret?” he said, and as she did so he too drew a chair nearer to hers. “It is disagreeable to be overheard,” he went on in a tone of half apology. “You ask me what I cannot now do,” he added.

The girl reared her head, and the softness of her manner hardened at once.

“Then,” she said, “we are quits. It does just as well. My conscience is clear now.”

“So is mine, as to that particular of – of what you call forgiving you,” he said, and his voice was a degree less calm. “I cannot do so now, for – I forgave you long, long ago.”