The Imaginary Marriage | Page 2

tear-dimmed eyes of the girl who had gone miserably down to the
lily-pond.
Fair haired was Hugh, ruddy of cheek, with no particular beauty to
boast of, save the wholesomeness and cleanliness of his young
manhood. He seemed to bring into the room a scent of the open country,
of the good brown earth and of the clean wind of heaven.
"Hello, Hugh!" said Lady Linden.
"Hello, my lady," said he, and kissed her. It had been his habit from
boyhood, also it had been his lifelong habit to love and respect the old
dame, and to feel not the slightest fear of her. In this he was singular,
and because he was the one person who did not fear her she preferred
him to anyone else.
"Hugh," she said--she went straight to the point, she always did; as a
hunter goes at a hedge, so her ladyship without prevarication went at
the matter she had in hand--"I have been talking to Marjorie about Tom
Arundel--"
His cheery face grew a little grave.
"Yes?"
"Well, it is absurd--you realise that?"
"I suppose so, but--" He paused.
"It is childish folly!"
"Do you think so? Do you think that she--" Again he paused, with a
nervousness and diffidence usually foreign to him.

"She's only a gel," said her ladyship. Her ladyship was Sussex born,
and talked Sussex when she became excited. "She's only a gel, and gels
have their fancies. I had my own--but bless you, they don't last. She
don't know her own mind."
"He's a good fellow," said Hugh generously.
"A nice lad, but he won't suit me for Marjorie's husband. Hugh, the
gel's in the garden, she is sitting by the lily-pond and believes her heart
is broken, but it isn't! Go and prove it isn't; go now!"
He met her eyes and flushed red. "I'll go and have a talk to Marjorie,"
he said. "You haven't been--too rough with her, have you?"
"Rough! I know how to deal with gels. I told her that I had the
command of her money, her four hundred a year till she was
twenty-five, and not a bob of it should she touch if she married against
my wish. Now go and talk to her--and talk sense--" She paused. "You
know what I mean--sense!"
A very pretty picture, the slender white-clad, drooping figure with its
crown of golden hair made, sitting on the bench beside the lily-pond.
Her hands were clasped, her eyes fixed on the stagnant green water
over which the dragon-flies skimmed.
Coming across the soundless turf, he stood for a moment to look at her.
Hurst Dormer was a fine old place, yet of late to him it had grown
singularly dull and cheerless. He had loved it all his life, but latterly he
had realised that there was something missing, something without
which the old house could not be home to him, and in his dreams
waking and sleeping he had seen this same little white-clad figure
seated at the foot of the great table in the dining-hall.
He had seen her in his mind's eye doing those little housewifely duties
that the mistresses of Hurst Dormer had always loved to do, her slender
fingers busy with the rare and delicate old china, or the
lavender-scented linen, or else in the wonderful old garden, the

gracious little mistress of all and of his heart.
And now she sat drooping like a wilted lily beside the green pond,
because of her love for another man, and his honest heart ached that it
should be so.
"Marjorie!" he said.
She lifted a tear-stained face and held out her hand' to him silently.
He patted her hand gently, as one pats the hand of a child. "Is--is it so
bad, little girl? Do you care for him so much?"
"Better than my life!" she said. "Oh, if you knew!"
"I see," he said quietly. He sat staring at the green waters, stirred now
and again by the fin of a lazy carp. He realised that there would be no
sweet girlish, golden-haired little mistress for Hurst Dormer, and the
realisation hurt him badly.
The girl seemed to have crept a little closer to him, as for comfort and
protection.
"She has made up her mind, and nothing will change it. She wants you
to--to marry me. She's told me so a hundred times. She won't listen to
anything else; she says you--you care for me, Hugh."
"Supposing I care so much, little girl, that I want your happiness above
everything in this world. Supposing--I clear out?" he said--"clear right
away, go to Africa, or somewhere or other?"
"She would make me wait till you came back, and you'd have to come
back, Hugh, because there is always Hurst Dormer. There's no way