At dessert a remark of papa's strikes me like a blow.
"Vasher is coming here this afternoon; I saw him yesterday, and made a point of it."
Fancy papa pressing anybody to enter his hospitable house—it sounds wonderfully like the spider and the fly!
"Did he seem unwilling to come, then?" asks mother.
"Not exactly, but he hesitated in a queer way—said he never went anywhere. He inquired for you!" continues the governor, nodding at me.
"Did he?" I say, with my eyes fixed on the apple I am peeling.
"You will call there to-morrow," he says to mother, "and take the girls?"
"I will call."
"I won't go," says Dolly, in an angry tone aside to me: not if I am tied in a cart like a pig going to market!"
"Supposing he comes now," I say to myself, "before I can get away;" and I sit in a restless misery until the familiar chuck of papa's thumb releases us.
"Mother," I say, in the drawing-room," I am going out at once. I shall not come in until the coast is clear."
"May I come with you?" asks Dolly.
"Not now, dear," I say, kissing the soft cheek that has never blushed or paled for love of any man living yet; "we will go out together to-morrow."
As I go through the garden I press my hands hard against my heart, and a mist creeps over my eyes, blotting out the garden, the flowers, and the sky. He is coming, here where his feet trod every nook and corner beside mine, here where we had our one perfect day of happiness and content; but he is not coming to me—he will sit in the old familiar room where we sat together so often, and I shall be out here alone. We are both alive, and well, and strong, living in the same place; but between us lies a woman's plain gold wedding-ring.
