Part 15

"Bad news!" exclaimed Carlton, with much concern. "From home?"

"Yes, from home," she replied; "but there is nothing wrong there; it is only bad news for us. My sister has decided to be married in June instead of July, and that cuts us out of a month on the Continent. That's all. We shall have to leave immediately--tomorrow. It seems that Mr. Abbey is able to go away sooner than he had hoped, and they are to be married on the first."

"Mr. Abbey!" exclaimed Carlton, catching at the name. "But your sister isn't going to marry him, is she?"

Miss Morris turned her head in some surprise. "Yes--why not?" she said.

"But I say!" cried Carlton, "I thought your aunt told me that YOU were going to marry Abbey; she told me so that day on the steamer when he came to see you off."

"I marry him--my aunt told you--impossible!" said Miss Morris, smiling. "She probably said that 'her niece' was going to marry him; she meant my sister. They had been engaged some time."

"Then who are YOU going to marry?" stammered Carlton.

"I am not going to marry any one," said Miss Morris.

Carlton stared at her blankly in amazement. "Well, that's most absurd!" he exclaimed.

He recognized instantly that the expression was hardly adequate, but he could not readjust his mind so suddenly to the new idea, and he remained looking at her with many confused memories rushing through his brain. A dozen questions were on his tongue. He remembered afterwards how he had noticed a servant trimming the candle in one of the orange-colored lanterns, and that he had watched him as he disappeared among the palms.

The silence lasted for so long a time that it had taken on a significance in itself which Carlton recognized. He pulled himself up with a short laugh. "Well," he remonstrated, mirthlessly, "I don't think you've treated ME very well."

"How, not treated you very well?" Miss Morris asked, settling herself more easily. She had been sitting during the pause which followed Carlton's discovery with a certain rigidity, as if she was on a strain of attention. But her tone was now as friendly as always, and held its customary suggestion of amusement. Carlton took his tone from it, although his mind was still busily occupied with incidents and words of hers that she had spoken in their past intercourse.

"Not fair in letting me think you were engaged," he said. "I've wasted so much time: I'm not half civil enough to engaged girls," he explained.

"You've been quite civil enough to us," said Miss Morris, "as a courier, philosopher, and friend. I'm very sorry we have to part company."

"Part company!" exclaimed Carlton, in sudden alarm. "But, I say, we mustn't do that."

"But we must, you see," said Miss Morris. "We must go back for the wedding, and you will have to follow the Princess Aline."

"Yes, of course," Carlton heard his own voice say. "I had forgotten the Princess Aline." But he was not thinking of what he was saying, nor of the Princess Aline. He was thinking of the many hours Miss Morris and he had been together, of the way she had looked at certain times, and of how he had caught himself watching her at others; how he had pictured the absent Mr. Abbey travelling with her later over the same route, and without a chaperon, sitting close at her side or holding her hand, and telling her just how pretty she was whenever he wished to do so, and without any fear of the consequences. He remembered how ready she had been to understand what he was going to say before he had finished saying it, and how she had always made him show the best of himself, and had caused him to leave unsaid many things that became common and unworthy when considered in the light of her judgment. He recalled how impatient he had been when she was late at dinner, and how cross he was throughout one whole day when she had kept her room. He felt with a sudden shock of delightful fear that he had grown to depend upon her, that she was the best companion he had ever known; and he remembered moments when they had been alone together at the table, or in some old palace, or during a long walk, when they had seemed to have the whole world entirely to themselves, and how he had consoled himself at such times with the thought that no matter how long she might be Abbey's wife, there had been these moments in her life which were his, with which Abbey had had nothing to do.

Carlton turned and looked at her with strange wide-open eyes, as though he saw her for the first time. He felt so sure of himself and of his love for her that the happiness of it made him tremble, and the thought that if he spoke she might answer him in the old, friendly, mocking tone of good-fellowship filled him with alarm. At that moment it seemed to Carlton that the most natural thing in the world for them to do would be to go back again together over the road they had come, seeing everything in the new light of his love for her, and so travel on and on for ever over the world, learning to love each other more and more each succeeding day, and leaving the rest of the universe to move along without them.

He leaned forward with his arm along the back of the bench, and bent his face towards hers. Her hand lay at her side, and his own closed over it, but the shock that the touch of her fingers gave him stopped and confused the words upon his tongue. He looked strangely at her, and could not find the speech he needed.

Miss Morris gave his hand a firm, friendly little pressure and drew her own away, as if he had taken hers only in an exuberance of good feeling.

"You have been very nice to us," she said, with an effort to make her tone sound kindly and approving. "And we--"

"You mustn't go; I can't let you go," said Carlton, hoarsely. There was no mistaking his tone or his earnestness now. "IF you go," he went on, breathlessly, "I must go with you."

The girl moved restlessly; she leaned forward, and drew in her breath with a slight, nervous tremor. Then she turned and faced him, almost as though she were afraid of him or of herself, and they sat so for an instant in silence. The air seemed to have grown close and heavy, and Carlton saw her dimly. In the silence he heard the splash of the fountain behind them, and the rustling of the leaves in the night wind, and the low, sighing murmur of a waltz.

He raised his head to listen, and she saw in the moonlight that he was smiling. It was as though he wished to delay any answer she might make to his last words.

"That is the waltz," he said, still speaking in a whisper, "that the gypsies played that night--" He stopped, and Miss Morris answered him by bending her head slowly in assent. It seemed to be an effort for her to even make that slight gesture.

"YOU don't remember it," said Carlton. "It meant nothing to you. I mean that night on the steamer when I told you what love meant to other people. What a fool I was!" he said, with an uncertain laugh.

"Yes, I remember it," she said--"last Thursday night, on the steamer."

"Thursday night!" exclaimed Carlton, indignantly. "Wednesday night, Tuesday night, how should I know what night of the week it was? It was the night of my life to me. That night I knew that I loved you as I had never hoped to care for any one in this world. When I told you that I did not know what love meant I felt all the time that I was lying. I knew that I loved you, and that I could never love any one else, and that I had never loved any one before; and if I had thought then you could care for me, your engagement or your promises would never have stopped my telling you so. You said that night that I would learn to love all the better, and more truly, for having doubted myself so long, and, oh, Edith," he cried, taking both her hands and holding them close in his own, "I cannot let you go now! I love you so! Don't laugh at me; don't mock at me. All the rest of my life depends on you."