"That's just it! He would so completely look after yours! It's his, in this regard, that need consideration."
"Well—I'll consider Christopher's interests," Edith said, quietly.
She remembered perfectly the letter she had written—which was in an ugly young man's pocket! It had been:
"Dear Christopher,—Do you think you really want me? If you are very sure, I am willing. I don't care for anybody else, so perhaps I can learn to care for you.
"The only thing is, you will spoil me, and they've done that at home already! and Rose says I need a strong hand! So in your interests—" and then it had blown away!
When Rose, after some desultory talk, went back to her room, Edith wrote another letter:
"Dear Christopher,—I know you have made a mistake. I don't care for you—to marry you—a bit, but I like you, oh, a quantity! We have always been such friends, and we always will be, won't we? but not that way.
"Some day you will be very happy with some one else who will suit you better. Then you will know how right I am.
With kindest wishes,
Edith Eversley."
She took this letter down the next morning to put in the bag, but the postman had come and gone. As she stood in the hall holding the letter, Farringdon came up.
"Good morning," he said. "You've missed the postman? I will be very happy to post it for you on my way to church."
"Thank you. But if it's on the way to church, I'm going myself, so I needn't trouble you."
Farringdon merely bowed, without saying anything banal about the absence of trouble. She was demurely conscious beneath his courtesy of the effort he was making to see her handwriting, and she wondered if he thought her refusal rude and a confirmation of his suspicion, or simply casual.
Whatever he thought, it did not prevent his being on the steps as she came out a few hours later in the freshness of white muslin, with her umbrella, prayer-book, and an unobtrusive white envelope in her hands.
They were going together down the drive—under his umbrella—before she quite grasped the situation.
"We seem to be the only ones," she hazarded.
"We are," he nodded.
"Mrs. Manstey has a headache," Edith said, "but the others—"
"The sun is too hot!"—he smiled.
"But you—I shouldn't have thought—" She paused, a little embarrassed.
"Yes?" he helped her. "That I was one of those who go to church, you mean?"
"Oh no!" she protested; but it was what she had meant.
"You are right," he said, without heeding the protest, and his ugly but compellingly attractive face was turned to hers. "I'm not in the least a scoffer, though; pray believe that. It's just that I—" he hesitated. "Do you remember a little verse:
'Although I enter not,
Yet round about the spot
Sometimes I hover,
And at the sacred gate
With longing eyes I wait,
Expectant of her.'"
Her face flushed. "But," she reverted, with naïveté, "you said you were going to church—"
"But because I knew you were one of the women who would be sure to go!" he said, positively.
She rebelled. "I don't look devotional at all!"
"But your eyes do," he declared. "They're suggestive of cathedrals and beautiful dimness, and a voice going up and up, like the 'Lark' song of Schubert's, don't you know!"
"No, I don't!" she said, wilfully; but she was conscious of his eyes on her face, and angry that her cheeks flushed beneath them.
They both were silent for a little, and when they left Mrs. Manstey's grounds for the uneven country road, that became shortly, by courtesy, the village street, they had a view of the little church with its tiny tower.
