Part 56 (2/2)
”I! oh, no, Archie!” And here the color flushed over Gracie's face, and her eyes filled with tears. The news was so unexpected,--so overwhelming. Another time the sweetness of it would have filled her with rapture. But now! ”Oh, no, no!” she cried, in so vehement a tone that her brother turned in surprise, and something of her meaning came home to him.
”Wait a moment,” he said, deprecatingly. ”I have not finished yet what I want to say. Mother said Mattie was greatly improved by her visit, and that she was infinitely obliged to me for yielding to her wish.
She told me plainly that it was impossible to have spared you before,--that you were her right hand with the girls, and that even now your loss would be great.”
”I do not mean to leave mother,” returned Grace, in a choked voice.
”Not if I want you and ask you to come?” he replied, with reproachful tenderness, ”Why, Grace, what has become of our old compact?”
”You do not need me now,” she faltered, hardly able to speak without weeping.
”We will talk of that by and by,” was the somewhat impatient answer.
”Just at this minute I want to tell you all the mother said on the subject. Facts before feelings, please,” with a touch of sarcasm; but he pointed it with a smile. ”You see, Grace, Isabel's marriage makes a difference. There is one girl off my father's hands. And then the boys are doing so well. Mother thinks that in another three months Clara may leave the school-room; she will be seventeen then, and, as Ellis has promised her a course of music-lessons, to develop her one talent, you may consider her off your hands.”
”Clara will never do me credit,” returned his sister, mournfully: ”she works steadily and takes pains, but she was never as clever as Isabel.”
”No; she is no s.h.i.+ning light, as mother owns; but she will play beautifully, if she be properly trained. Well, as to the other girls, it appears that my father has decided to accept my offer of sending Susie to a first-cla.s.s boarding-school; and, as he has determined to do the same for Laura, there is only Dottie for Mattie to manage or mismanage. So you see, Gracie, your school-room drudgery is over.
Mother herself, by her own will, has opened the prison-doors.”
He spoke in a light jesting tone, but Grace answered, almost pa.s.sionately,--
”I tell you no, Archie! I no longer wish it so; it is too late: things are now quite different.”
”What do you mean?” he returned, with a long steady look that seemed to draw out her words in spite of her resolve not to speak them.
”I mean that things are changed--that you no longer need me, or wish me to live with you.”
”I need you more,” he returned, calmly; ”perhaps I have never needed you so much. As for living with me, is it your desire to condemn me to an existence of perfect loneliness?--for after Christmas Mattie leaves me. You are mysterious, Grace; you are not your old self.”
”Oh, it is you that are not yourself!” she retorted, in a tone of grief. ”Why have you avoided me? why do you withhold your confidence?
why do your letters tell me nothing? and then you come and are still silent.”
”What is it that you would have me tell you?” he asked; but this time he did not look her in the face.
”I would know this thing that has come between us and robbed me of your confidence. You are ill at ease; you are unhappy, Archie! You have never kept a trouble from me before: it was always I who shared your hopes and fears.”
”You may still share them. I am not changed, as you imagine Grace. All that I can tell you I will, even if you demand it in that 'money-or-your-life' style, as you are doing now,” trying to turn it off with a jest.
”Oh, Archie!”
”Well, what of Archie, now?”
”That you should laugh away my words! you have never done that before.”
”Very well, I will be serious; nay, more, I will be solemn. Grace, I forbid you ever to mention this thing again, on pain of my bitter displeasure!”
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