‘Good-bye, Miss Westbury,’ said a voice at her ear.
Mary turned round with an impatience it was scarcely possible to disguise. ‘Oh, Mr. Hillyard, I beg your pardon! I thought you were gone. Good-bye!’ she said. He was standing holding out his hand with his eyes bent on her, and a glow in them such as even a woman agitated with feelings of her own could scarcely mistake.
‘Good-bye, Miss Westbury. I shall never forget the days I have spent here,’ he said, and stooped over her hand, as if----
‘Hillyard! do you mean to stay all day?’ cried Ben from the dog-cart, in a tone which was not sweet.
‘Indeed, you will be late for the train; you have not a moment to lose,’ cried Mary, withdrawing her hand.
He muttered something, she could not tell what,--nor, indeed, did she care. ‘Not farewell yet,’ was it he said? But what did it matter? The interruption had so far roused her that she felt able to go to the window and smile and wave her hand to Ben. Hillyard was still holding his hat in his hand, trying to attract her attention, when the dog-cart disappeared down the avenue. Then Mary sat down and gazed straight before her, with that poignant sense of unreality which such a moment gives. Five minutes ago he was there; and now here was vacancy, silence,--a blank in which life lost itself. Five minutes, and all the world changed! Her brow was burning and heavy with tears unshed,--an ache which seemed physical, so hard the strain and pain it produced in her, went through her heart. And a whole long day to go through, and the birds singing merrily, and the sun shining, and old Willis on his way to remove the remains of Ben’s breakfast, and to spread the table for the family that remained! ‘It don’t seem no good, do it, Miss Mary, to have master home so short, and he been so long away?’ Mary started to her feet at the words. No good indeed?--perhaps harm, if one dared say so!--deeper blank and silence after the momentary movement and the light!
And now to think it was all over, and that there remained nothing but the old life to be taken up again and gone on with just as before! If it had been night, when one could have shrouded one’s-self in one’s own room, and cried or slept, and forgotten one’s-self! But it was day,--early morning,--with a whole heap of duties to be performed, and people to look on while she was performing them. And Mary felt sick of it all,--the duties, and the daylight, and the life. Laurie, who thought early rising idiotic, went by a much later train, at what he called a rational hour. And then the house was left in its old quiet, but for the presence of Frank and Alice and the children, which no doubt made a great difference. When Mary went to her godmother with the newspaper she was questioned minutely about Ben’s departure and his looks. ‘Did he eat any breakfast, Mary?’ Mrs. Renton said, putting her handkerchief to her eyes.