CHAPTER VII.

_THE LETTER._

"IT'S done."

"What is done?"

"Father has written to Miss Primrose!"

"What has he said?"

"I don't know exactly. He did not let me see."

"I hope you are satisfied now. You have given him no peace since I came home."

"Nessie, if you will not understand how things are, I can't make you."

"I do understand, but there are different ways of doing things."

Pauline might have retorted, with equal truth, that there are also different ways of not doing things. She was hardly in spirits for a retort, however, unless it was an ill-tempered one; and she was doing her best not to give way to ill-temper.

"Where have you been?" asked Nessie, gaping.

"Only to the corner—to see father post his letter."

"I shouldn't have thought two people were needed for that task. Couldn't you trust him to go alone? Or couldn't you do it for him?"

"I couldn't trust him not to change his mind before he reached the pillar, and he would not give the letter to me. I might have seen the address."

"Well—if you had! Why should he mind?"

"I don't know. He does mind."

"It's some antique love affair, Pauline."

"Nonsense!"

Yet Pauline wondered whether Nessie's guess might have hit the mark.

"And the letter is gone—after all this fuss! It seems queer to be begging help of a stranger."

"Not a stranger to father, and not begging help. Only asking if she can advise me where to get work. That's what I want. No use to think of work for him. He has always taken life easily, and when one is getting old, one can't change."

"I mean to take life easily. Suppose no answer comes from Miss Primrose?"

"Then I hope my father will see that we have to decide for ourselves."

Nessie sank into a brown study, lounging among the cushions. She was a very indolent young lady, fond of limp postures, not easy to dislodge from a comfortable corner, and not addicted to needless exertion. Mr. Ogilvie called her "delicate," and sympathised, being himself of the same lymphatic temperament. Pauline called her "lazy," and tried the routing plan, without much success. Possibly both were true statements, but the one had not much to do with the other. Nessie might have been delicate without laziness, or lazy without delicacy. Many most delicate people are full of energy, free from ease-loving indolence; and many people in good health are overburdened with it. Delicacy and indolence may co-exist in one person, but they are quite as often separated. Mr. Ogilvie's plea for Nessie is, however, the common plea put forth by laziness.

Four days passed, and no answer arrived. Mr. Ogilvie grew restless, and fell into a nervous tremor whenever the postman became visible. He was plainly disappointed.

After a spell of rain, fine weather had come, and Rudge was often out-of-doors. Pauline had not seen nearly so much of him since Nessie's return. And the last few days, she had scarcely seen him at all. She tried for a while to cheat herself out of an acknowledgment of the fact, but this could not continue. Nobody guessed how that prosaic little being watched for his coming and going, how she listened for his footsteps overhead.

Mr. Ogilvie and Nessie only found her rather more tart than usual.

"What are we to do next, if Miss Primrose doesn't write?" she asked, after lunch, on the fourth day of waiting.

"Miss Primrose is sure to write."

"Yes, so one may say. But if she does not?" A pause. "She may not be alive even. How can you tell, if you have not heard from her lately?"

Mr. Ogilvie stood up to escape, as usual.

"If anything had happened, I should have heard," he said. "Is no one going for a walk this fine day?"

"I can't. I have all this mending to do." Pauline pointed to a pile.

"I'll go," volunteered Nessie. "Pauline is glued to her patches and darns."

Pauline made no defence. She did not wish to move, brightly though the sun shone. She knew that Rudge was indoors, and he might chance to come to the downstairs sitting-room for a word. He had often done so, just at this hour, to ask if he could do any little thing for her out-of-doors. She could not afford to risk absence. All this was not definitely acknowledged to herself, but the motive underlay her resolute clinging to the pile of work.

Mr. Ogilvie and Nessie vanished, and Pauline sat alone, busy with fingers and mind. The door had been left rather more than ajar, and she did not rise to shut it.

A quick step crossed the room overhead, almost immediately after the shutting of the front door, and an odd question came up—Had he seen Mr. Ogilvie and Nessie start? Pauline quashed the suggestion at once, but it obtruded itself again. For Rudge was hurrying downstairs. Would he put his head in, and—?

No; he did nothing of the kind. Pauline could not see him pass where she sat, but he did not so much as turn his head towards the dining-room door. Had he done so, he must have caught a glimpse of Pauline. He went along the passage swiftly, straight to the front door, and was gone, walking briskly in the same direction as that taken by her father and sister.

Pauline's needle lay idle for awhile, as she sat questioning with herself. What could it mean? That had not been his wont lately. Till Nessie came home, he had made or accepted constant little opportunities for intercourse with Pauline: such opportunities as this which he had now flung away. Had anything come between him and her? Had Pauline herself been too frank about the family circumstances? Had Nessie said or done aught to turn him from her? Pauline answered the last question at once in the negative. Nessie was very vain, and not very brilliant, perhaps even a little dull mentally, but nobody could accuse her of malice.

Then—was it that Rudge had been fascinated at first sight by Nessie's prettiness?

This at least was not impossible. Pauline had not lived twenty-seven years without gaining some notion of masculine susceptibility to looks.

If Rudge were changed, a cause, of course, existed; and Pauline felt sure he was changed. She looked at the matter resolutely, accepting this as a fact, forgetting how easily one may be deceived.

One or two hot tears were distilled, and then she braced herself up, determined that nobody should guess her trouble—Mr. Ogilvie and Nessie least of all.