A Pair of Patient Lovers | Page 5

we expected him to find some excuse for writing after he
reached his place in northern Ohio; but he did not write, and he became
more and more the memory of a young clergyman in the beginning of a
love-affair, till one summer, while we were still disputing where we
should spend the hot weather within business reach, there came a letter
from him saying that he was settled at Gormanville, and wishing that
he might tempt us up some afternoon before we were off to the
mountains or seaside. This revived all my wife's waning interest in him,
and it was hard to keep the answer I made him from expressing in a
series of crucial inquiries the excitement she felt at his being in New
England and so near Boston, and in Gormanville of all places. It was
one of the places we had thought of for the summer, and we were yet so
far from having relinquished it that we were recurring from time to
time in hope and fear to the advertisement of an old village mansion
there, with ample grounds, garden, orchard, ice-house, and stables, for
a very low rental to an unexceptionable tenant. We had no doubt of our
own qualifications, but we had misgivings of the village mansion; and I
am afraid that I rather unduly despatched the personal part of my letter,
in my haste to ask what Glendenning knew and what he thought of the
Conwell place. However, the letter seemed to serve all purposes. There
came a reply from Glendenning, most cordial, even affectionate, saying
that the Conwell place was delightful, and I must come at once and see
it. He professed that he would be glad to have Mrs. March come too,
and he declared that if his joy at having us did not fill his modest
rectory to bursting, he was sure it could stand the physical strain of our
presence, though he confessed that his guest-chamber was tiny.
"He wants you, Basil," my wife divined from terms which gave me no
sense of any latent design of parting us in his hospitality. "But,
evidently, it isn't a chance to be missed, and you must go--instantly.
Can you go to-morrow? But telegraph him you're coming, and tell him
to hold on to the Conwell place; it may be snapped up any moment if

it's so desirable."
I did not go till the following week, when I found that no one had
attempted to snap up the Conwell place. In fact, it rather snapped me up,
I secured it with so little trouble. I reported it so perfect that all my
wife's fears of a latent objection to it were roused again. But when I
said I thought we could relinquish it, her terrors subsided; and I thought
this the right moment to deliver a stroke that I had been holding in
reserve.
"You know," I began, "the Bentleys have their summer place there--the
old Bentley homestead. It's their ancestral town, you know."
"Bentleys? What Bentleys?" she demanded, opaquely.
"Why, those people we met on the Corinthian, summer before last--you
thought he was in love with the girl--"
A simultaneous photograph could alone reproduce Mrs. March's
tumultuous and various emotions as she seized the fact conveyed in my
words. She poured out a volume of mingled conjectures, assertions,
suspicions, conclusions, in which there was nothing final but the
decision that we must not dream of going there; that it would look like
thrusting ourselves in, and would be in the worst sort of taste; they
would all hate us, and we should feel that we were spies upon the
young people; for of course the Bentleys had got Glendenning there to
marry him, and in effect did not want any one to witness the disgraceful
spectacle.
I said, "That may be the nefarious purpose of the young lady, but, as I
understood Glendenning, it is no part of her mother's design."
"What do you mean?"
"Miss Bentley may have got him there to marry him, but Mrs. Bentley
seems to have meant nothing more than an engagement at the worst."
"What do you mean? They're not engaged, are they?"

"They're not married, at any rate, and I suppose they're engaged. I did
not have it from Miss Bentley, but I suppose Glendenning may be
trusted in such a case."
"Now," said my wife, with a severity that might well have appalled me,
"if you will please to explain, Basil, it will be better for you."
"Why, it is simply this. Glendenning seems to have made himself so
useful to the mother and pleasing to the daughter after we left them in
Montreal that he was tolerated on a pretence that there was reason for
his writing back to Mrs. Bentley after