Joseph thinks all the world of him, I know. I see Joseph coming this way. We must devise something for you. My own idea is that you should get married at once. It will be easier to reconcile your mother afterwards. But here he is."

Joseph sat down beside his affianced, and she was so eager to speak to him that he was delighted. He too had observed her fits of absence, and had attributed them to the same cause as Margaret; but he wondered that they did not begin to subside as the idea of her engagement grew familiar. She was eager enough now. How pleasant it was! And it was in Margaret she was interesting herself, which was "nice" in her.

Mrs Naylor observed the eagerness, and was disgusted. It was positively indelicate, she thought, for a girl not yet married to make such open advances before a roomful of people. "Poor Joseph! What a fool he was! And how he would suffer for it by-and-by! A bold, forward girl!"

Joseph and Rose went on talking, regardless of that same Susan and anything she might think. Joseph was averse to interfering; but Rose talked him over, which, as this was the first time she had asked him to do her a favour, was not difficult. And then, his views on many subjects were different now from what they had been not long before.

True love had grown more precious in his eyes, and poor Susan's wisdom perhaps less so, since she had expressed her disapproval of his matrimonial scheme.

"Well, Margaret," he said, sitting down between her and Rose, with a hand laid upon the hands of each, "we have made up our minds to help you if we can; but I think you should try and get away quietly, and avoid fuss. I will try and smooth matters with your mother after you are gone. So try and manage it quietly."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THEY HAVE IT OUT.

The next three or four days produced nothing remarkable. Margaret remained in close attendance on her mother, who did her best to make her feel like a naughty child. Her only solace was Rose's sympathy; but notwithstanding it, she felt at times most dreadfully wicked, and always depressed and contrite. Only the thought of Walter's loneliness at Lippenstock kept her true; and she did contrive to send him little notes, and to receive through Rosa notes in return, notwithstanding the sharp eye which her mother kept upon her movements.

Rose herself continued feverish and uncertain enough to occasion surprise to all her friends. She, so light-hearted and brave, so bright and clever--that she should appear in the character of tremulous and wistful maid, on the fulfilment of what had seemed her dearest wish! She was as kind and intimate with Joseph as ever; and he told himself that he had nothing to complain of, that he must remember their difference in age, and that with time they would grow nearer to one another. But still he felt a barrier between them--a reserve which all his ardour failed to surmount--an unresponsive silence when his raptures strove to fit themselves to words, which chilled him in spite of his a.s.surances to himself that all was well. In desultory conversation she would be as bright as ever; but as he strove to lead up to converse more close, he found himself checked he knew not how; for she did not repulse, she only failed to respond. Her favourite topic to converse on was Margaret's attachment: on that she would warm even to enthusiasm, and run on at any length, till he almost felt it in his heart to grow jealous of his favourite niece.

Lettice Deane was the only one who had a clue to Rose's strangeness.

She felt sorry for her and greatly surprised, blaming Roe, notwithstanding her declaration that he was nothing to her; and vowed that his conduct in hanging on at the Beach, was ungentlemanlike, and altogether abominable.

Roe himself seemed as feverish and ill at ease as the lady. He took little interest in the society of the other men, and seemed to submit to the company of Maida rather than court it. Maida felt that he was growing moody on her hands, and that their intimacy was not progressing. "Yet why did he stay on?" she asked herself. "There was no one else in the house for whom he seemed to care." She must learn to be more devoted and winning, she thought, and get over this constraint on his part, which she felt was growing up between them; but she did not see very clearly how she was to set about it. He detested forward women and bold women--he often said so--and was severely critical when they sat together on the galleries looking down on the young people upon the sands, who, after the manner of their kind, had a way of a.s.sorting themselves in couples as they took their evening strolls.

It was arranged that on a certain day there should be a "clam-bake" on the sands at Blue Fish Creek. It was to be an affair on a gigantic scale. The keepers of half-a-dozen establishments along the coast had got it up. Bushels innumerable of clams were to be roasted around a huge bonfire; an ox was to be roasted whole; and the seaside visitors, cloyed with innkeepers' fare and indoor luxury, were for once to dine uncomfortably on the sands, upon slices of half-raw beef and platefuls of scorched sh.e.l.l-fish. As a slice of lemon gives savour to insipid veal, so a rough and indigestible banquet in the open air revives a relish in jaded guests for the daily superfluity of everything, which hotel dinners provide. There was to be a dance in the town hall afterwards, and the company would drive home in the dark. All Clam Beach was to go, as a matter of course; even the valetudinarian Mrs Naylor resolved to venture. Margaret took care that Walter should know, and--for why indulge in useless mystery?--they were to make their push for freedom on that return journey.

The affair came off as designed. The weather was propitious, the guests hungry, in high spirits, and more numerous even than had been expected. They seated themselves in parties on the sands. The Naylors and Deanes naturally sat together, along with the Pettys and Wilkies--Ann Petty beside Peter Wilkie, and Walter Petty next Margaret; Ann feeling a little ashamed and altogether proud, at having, as she thought, taken away the other's young man; while Walter, poor lad, confronted Peter in triumph. His fortunes, he felt, were mending. The two mothers cast glances of wrathful scorn at each other between the legs of the black waiters running a.s.siduously round within the ring. It was the only amus.e.m.e.nt open to them at their time of life, in the intervals between plying knife and fork.

Margaret, looking over the people's heads, descried far away the manly form she most desired to see. Her plot was going to work, but meanwhile she must take care to lull suspicion in her mother's mind.

The way to do that was being civil to her companion. She exerted herself and made the poor lad really happy--feeling ashamed and burdened the while, at her appalling treachery, and really sorry for the young fellow, who was so kind and nice, and who admired her so openly.

At length the repast was ended. Everybody had eaten as many clams as seemed expedient. The company rose up and sauntered away, leaving the waiters free to clear off the relics of the feast. Joseph took Rose's arm and drifted apart from the rest as quietly as he could contrive.

It was not to eat sh.e.l.l-fish in public that he had consented to dine uncomfortably on a sandheap. Rose would have been content to be less exclusively private, and looked round to see if she could not beckon Margaret to join them; but Margaret, between Walter Petty and her mother, was walking another way, so she accepted the inevitable with a good grace, and strove to interest herself in her companion. A few wind-bent trees maintained a struggling existence not far off upon a slope of sun-parched turf coming down upon the sh.o.r.e, with morsels of grateful shade; and thither they bent their steps.

"I am glad _that_ part of the enjoyment is through," Joseph was saying. "It gives one cramps all over, that sitting on the ground all crumpled up, and eating things. But apparently there must be eating, if it is a party of pleasure."

"Please, sir, there is a parcel for you at the kitchen tent--sent on as you ordered. The man says you must sign a receipt." It was a waiter who spoke, puffing and fanning his shining black face, and grinning with all his teeth, while he held his hand convenient for the expected tip.

"Ha! Come, has it?" and Joseph smiled in return, slipping the dollars in the ready palm, and dismissing the messenger well pleased.

"Let me settle you comfortably beneath yon tree, dearest; and then will you excuse me till I run after the fellow? I shall not be a minute gone. You will wait for me there, will you not?"

"Go back at once; I can do that much for myself, and will wait there as you say."

And so they parted, Joseph making all haste in one direction, while Rose walked leisurely forward in the other. She had almost reached the trees, her sunshade open before her, her eyes upon the sand.

"At last!" and a figure stood between her and the light. "I have been waiting, Rose, for a chance like this."

Rose started at the voice. A thrill ran through her, and the sunshade fell aside, as though the arm which held it were benumbed. Immediately in front of her stood Gilbert Roe. The flaming red and white chased one another across her face, but her eye looked steadily in his.

"Sir!" she cried, with indignant emphasis; but she said no more, her lips closed tightly, and her eyebrows straightened in a frown.

"They tell me you are going to be married, Rose? You must hear me this once. I am resolved to have it out with you."

She threw back her head, and her nostrils quivered in pride. The angry blood suffused her temples now; there was no paleness and no sign of fear. "Allow me to pa.s.s," she answered, haughtily.

"Not till you hear me, Rose. I mean to save you from yourself."

"What right have you to interfere with me?"

"The strongest; the right of one who loves you."

"You have _no_ right! The law denies it. It gives me freedom. You shall not interfere."

"Calm yourself, Rose. I cannot live without you. And more, you never will be happy but with me."

"Bah! you are too long of finding it out. I am free, and I shall keep my liberty as far as you are concerned. I have tried you, and know you to my cost. It is over now. The law has cried quits between us."

"It cannot, Rose! Think of the old time in Canada!--the evenings when we sang together, and talked in the porch--the walks between the corn-fields--the afternoons in the orchard--and the promises we made.

Can you ever forget them?"

"How dare you remind me of them? Have you no decent shame? You might wish the ground to open and let you through, rather than hear those old days named, and be reminded how you have outraged a trusting girl!"

"I have been true to my vows, Rose. I make no merit of it; I could not have been otherwise. It was my glory and delight to fulfil them."

"And you did it admirably! certainly. It was in fulfilment of them, I suppose, that you made fierce love to that silly Horatia Simpkins, under my very nose, and before the eyes of her own husband? If it had even been a handsome woman, or one not absolutely a fool, the slight might have been less unpardonable. But with her!"

"What else could I have done?--the way you went on with her husband--that conceited a.s.s Rupert. Would you have had me stand by, like a gawk, with my thumb in my mouth, a.s.senting to your outrageous flirtation, which nearly drove his poor little silly wife out of her wits with jealousy? She is not as clever, perhaps, as you are, but at least she is fond of her husband!"

Rose coughed impatiently and stamped her foot. The adversary must be admitted to have scored one by that thrust.

"Is a woman to give up the amus.e.m.e.nts of social life--the little conventional pleasantnesses of society--because she happens to have lent a too trusting ear, and yielded to the man who wanted to marry her? Does she grow plain and old and stupid from the day she becomes a wife? Is she no more to find pleasure in being liked and admired? Life is not over when she comes back from church: she is still as human as she was before--wants a little of the diversions she has learnt to like, and needs a continuance of the devotion her suitor taught her to expect. You are hideously jealous, Gilbert. You should have been born a Turk, with a harem built out in the back-yard, beside the chicken-house, to lock up your wife in."

It was the first time she had used his name. Gilbert noted it and took courage.

"You know you wanted me to be jealous when you took up with that ninny--and you wanted to tease his wife. You succeeded. She thought you had stolen her husband's affection--or what represents it, in him--and she was not going to submit quietly to the robbery. She thought to make reprisals, and so laid siege to your husband in return. I am not sure but she got the revenge she wanted. You cannot deny that you were absurdly jealous."

"Absurdly? Yes; laugh at me! I deserve it for allowing you to address me. You consider me a fool. You have said as much before, and you said other things as well, which were even worse. You insulted me with suspicion, and used expressions as if I were improper. You know you did! Bertie Roe!... You never loved me really, I do believe--not as you made me expect you would--not as a girl should be loved, who gives up her life and everything to be married to a man. You behaved like a barbarian! Deny it if you dare!"

"I do deny it, Rose. Could I stand by and see you play the fool with a contemptible duffer, before the eyes of all Chicago?--see people in ball-rooms and theatres follow you with their eyes, nudge each other, and exchange glances, and shrug, as if to say, 'another young wife taking the turn downhill'?"

"You are insulting!--but I might have expected it. 'Cruelty and desertion' were the words in the decree."

"I dare you to lay your hand upon your heart and say that I was cruel.

I merely remonstrated--and then you scolded.... You know you did, Rose. You made home unbearable. I had to leave the house."