Caroline eyed Evan with a meaning sadness.
“We will hurry to our carriage,” she said. “I will write.”
They were seen to make a little circuit so as not to approach Rose; after whom, thoughtless of his cruelty, Evan bent his steps slowly, halting when she reached her carriage. He believed—rather, he knew that she had seen him. There was a consciousness in the composed outlines of her face as she passed: the indifference was too perfect. Let her hate him, if she pleased. It recompensed him that the air she wore should make her appearance more womanly; and that black dress and crape-bonnet, in some way, touched him to mournful thoughts of her that helped a partial forgetfulness of wounded self.
Rose had driven of. He was looking at the same spot where Caroline’s hand waved from her carriage. Juliana was not seen. Caroline requested her to nod to him once, but she would not. She leaned back hiding her eyes, and moving a petulant shoulder at Caroline’s hand.
“Has he offended you, my child?”
Juliana answered harshly:
“No—no.”
“Are my hopes false?” asked the mellow voice.
No reply was heard. The wheels rolled on, and Caroline tried other subjects, knowing possibly that they would lead Juliana back to this of her own accord.
“You saw how she treated him?” the latter presently said, without moving her hand from before her eyes.
“Yes, dear. He forgives her, and will forget it.”
“Oh!” she clenched her long thin hand, “I pray that I may not die before I have made her repent it. She shall!”
Juliana looked glitteringly in Caroline’s face, and then fell a-weeping, and suffered herself to be folded and caressed. The storm was long subsiding.
“Dearest! you are better now?” said Caroline.
She whispered: “Yes.”
“My brother has only to know you, dear”
“Hush! That’s past.” Juliana stopped her; and, on a deep breath that threatened to break to sobs, she added in a sweeter voice than was common to her, “Ah, why—why did you tell him about the Beckley property?”
Caroline vainly strove to deny that she had told him. Juliana’s head shook mournfully at her; and now Caroline knew what Juliana meant when she begged so earnestly that Evan should be kept ignorant of her change of fortune.
Some days after this the cold struck Juliana’s chest, and she sickened. The three sisters held a sitting to consider what it was best to do with her. Caroline proposed to take her to Beckley without delay. Harriet was of opinion that the least they could do was to write to her relations and make them instantly aware of her condition.
But the Countess said, “No,” to both. Her argument was, that Juliana being independent, they were by no means bound to “bundle” her, in her state, back to a place where she had been so shamefully maltreated: that here she would live, while there she would certainly die: that absence of excitement was her medicine, and that here she had it. Mrs. Andrew, feeling herself responsible as the young lady’s hostess, did not acquiesce in the Countess’s views till she had consulted Juliana; and then apologies for giving trouble were breathed on the one hand; sympathy, condolences, and professions of esteem, on the other. Juliana said, she was but slightly ill, would soon recover: entreated not to leave them before she was thoroughly re-established, and to consent to be looked on as one of the family, she sighed, and said, it was the utmost she could hope. Of course the ladies took this compliment to themselves, but Evan began to wax in importance. The Countess thought it nearly time to acknowledge him, and supported the idea by a citation of the doctrine, that to forgive is Christian. It happened, however, that Harriet, who had less art and more will than her sisters, was inflexible. She, living in a society but a few steps above Tailordom, however magnificent in expenditure and resources, abhorred it solemnly. From motives of prudence, as well as personal disgust, she continued firm in declining to receive her brother. She would not relent when the Countess pointed out a dim, a dazzling, prospect, growing out of Evan’s proximity to the heiress of Beckley Court; she was not to be moved when Caroline suggested that the specific for the frail invalid was Evan’s presence. As to this, Juliana was sufficiently open, though, as she conceived, her art was extreme.
“Do you know why I stay to vex and trouble you?” she asked Caroline. “Well, then, it is that I may see your brother united to you all: and then I shall go happy.”
The pretext served also to make him the subjec of many conversations. Twice a week a bunch of the best flowers that could be got were sorted and arranged by her, and sent namelessly to brighten Evan’s chamber.
“I may do such a thing as this, you know, without incurring blame,” she said.
The sight of a love so humble in its strength and affluence, sent Caroline to Evan on a fruitless errand. What availed it that, accused of giving lead to his pride in refusing the heiress, Evan should declare that he did not love her? He did not, Caroline admitted as possible, but he might. He might learn to love her, and therefore he was wrong in wounding her heart. She related flattering anecdotes. She drew tearful pictures of Juliana’s love for him; and noticing how he seemed to prize his bouquet of flowers, said:
“Do you love them for themselves, or the hand that sent them?”
Evan blushed, for it had been a struggle for him to receive them, as he thought, from Rose in secret. The flowers lost their value; the song that had arisen out of them, “Thou livest in my memory,” ceased. But they came still. How many degrees from love gratitude may be, I have not reckoned. I rather fear it lies on the opposite shore. From a youth to a girl, it may yet be very tender; the more so, because their ages commonly exclude such a sentiment, and nature seems willing to make a transition stage of it. Evan