“Christie,” she said gently, “listen to me. Be yourself and go home, and think over all this. I cannot give you what you ask. Come, be wise and manly over this disappointment. Go away for a week, and then come back to me, and let our pleasant old friendship be resumed. You give me pain, indeed you do, by this outburst. It is so unlike you.”
“Unlike me? Yes, you have nearly driven me mad.”
“No, no. No, no,” she said tenderly. “Be calm. Indeed and indeed, I have felt as warm and affectionate to you of late as a sister could feel for a brother. I have felt so pleased to see how you were winning your way here amongst the people; and when I have heard a light or contemptuous utterance about you, it has made me angry and ready to speak in your defence.”
“Yes, I know,” he cried; “and it is this that taught me that you must care for me – must love me.”
“Cannot a woman esteem and be attached to a youth without loving him?”
“Youth! There! You treat me as if I were a boy,” he cried angrily. “Can I help seeming so young?”
“No,” she said, taking his hand, “But you are in heart and ways very, very young, Christie Bayle. Am I to tell you again that it was this brought about our intimacy, for I found you so fresh in your young manliness, so different to the gentlemen I have been accustomed to? Come: forget all this. Let us be friends.”
“Friends? No, it is impossible,” he cried bitterly. “I know I am boyish and weak, and that is why you hold me in such contempt.”
“Contempt? Oh, no!”
“But, some day,” he pleaded, “I’ll wait – any time – ”
“No, no, no,” she said flushing, “it is impossible.”
“Then,” he raged as he started up, “I am right. You love some one else. Who is it? I will know.”
“Mr Bayle!”
There was a calm queenly dignity in her look and words that checked his rage; and she saw it as he sank into the nearest chair, his face bent down upon his hands, and his shoulders heaving with the emotion that escaped now and then in a hoarse sob.
“Poor boy!” she said to herself as the indignation he had roused gave way to pity.
“Christie Bayle,” she said aloud, as she approached him once more, and laid her hand upon his shoulder.
“Don’t touch me,” he cried hoarsely as he sprang up; and she started back, half frightened at his wild, haggard face. “I might have known,” he panted. “Heaven forgive you! Good-bye – good-bye for ever!” Before Millicent could speak he had reached the door, and the next minute she heard his hurried steps as he went down the street.
Volume One – Chapter Nine.
The Scales Fall from Sir Gordon’s Eyes
Millicent stood listening till the steps had died away, and then sat down at the writing-table.
“Poor boy!” she said softly, as she passed her hand over her eyes, “I am so sorry.”
She laid down the pen, and ran over her conduct – all that she had said and done since her first meeting with the curate; but ended by shaking her head, and declaring to herself that she could find nothing in her behaviour to call for blame.
“No,” she said, rising from the table, after writing a few lines which she tore up, “I must not write to him; the wound must be left to time.”
A double knock announced a visitor, and directly after Thisbe King, the maid, ushered in Sir Gordon, who, in addition to his customary dress, wore – what was very unusual for him – a flower in his button-hole, which, with a great show of ceremony, he detached, and presented to Millicent before taking his seat.
As a rule he was full of chatty conversation, but, to Millicent’s surprise, he remained perfectly silent, gazing straight before him through the window.
“Is anything the matter, Sir Gordon?” said Millicent at last. “Papa is out, but he will not be long.” These words roused him, and he smiled at her gravely.
“No, my dear Miss Luttrell,” he said, “nothing is wrong; but at my time of life, when a man has anything particular to say, he weighs it well – he brings a good deal of thought to bear. I was trying to do this now.”
“But mamma is out too,” said Millicent.
“Yes, I know,” he replied, “and therefore I came on to speak to you.”
“Sir Gordon!”
“My dear Miss Luttrell – there, I have known you so long that I may call you my dear child – I think you believe in me?”
“Believe in you, Sir Gordon?”
“Yes, that I have the instincts, I hope, of a gentleman; that I am your father’s very good friend; and that I reverence his child.”
“Oh yes, Sir Gordon,” said Millicent, placing her hand in his, as he extended it towards her.
“That is well, then,” he said; and there was another pause, during which he gazed thoughtfully at the hand he held for a few moments, and then raised it to his lips and allowed it afterwards to glide away.
Millicent flushed slightly, for, in spite of herself, the thought of her visitor’s object began to dawn upon her, though she refused to believe it at first.
“Let me see,” he said at last, “time slides away so fast. You must be three-and-twenty now.”
“I thought a lady’s age was a secret, Sir Gordon,” said Millicent smiling.
“To weak, vain women, yes, my child; but your mind is too clear and candid for such subterfuges as that. Twenty-three! Compared with that, I am quite an old man.”
Millicent’s colour began to deepen, but she made a brave effort to be calm, mastered her emotion, and sat listening to the strange wooing that had commenced.
“I am going to speak very plainly,” her visitor said, gazing wistfully in her eyes, “and to tell you, Millicent, that for the past five years I have been your humble suitor.”
“Sir Gordon!”
“Hush! hush! On the strength of our old friendship hear me out, my child. I will not say a word that shall wilfully give you pain; I only ask for a hearing.”
Millicent sank back in her chair, clasped her hands, and let them rest in her lap, for she was too agitated to speak. The events of an hour or two before had unhinged her.
“For five years I have been nursing this idea in my breast,” he continued, “one day determining to speak, and then telling myself that I was weak and foolish, that the thing was impossible; and then, as you know, I have gone away for months together in my yacht. I will tell you what I have said to myself: ‘You are getting well on in life; she is young and beautiful. The match would not be right. Some day she will form an attachment for some man suited to her. Take your pleasure in seeing the woman you love happier than you could ever make her.’”
This was a revelation to Millicent, whose lips parted, and whose troubled eyes were fixed upon the speaker.
“The years went on, my child,” continued Sir Gordon, “and I kept fancying that the man had come, and that the test of my love for you was to be tried. I was willing to suffer – for your sake – to see you happy; and though I was ready to offer you wealth, title, and the tender affection of an elderly man, I put it aside, striving to do my duty.”
“Sir Gordon, I never knew of all this.”
“Knew!” he said, with a smile, “no: I never let you know. Well, my child, not to distress you too much, I have waited; and, as you knew, I have seen your admirers flitting about you, one by one, all these years; and I confess it, with a sense of delight I dare not dwell upon, I have found that not one of these butterflies