Czytaj książkę: «The Pillars of the House; Or, Under Wode, Under Rode, Vol. 1 (of 2)», strona 37

CHAPTER XXII
THE REAL THING AND NO MISTAKE

'With asses all his time he spent,

Their club's perpetual president,

He caught their manners, looks, and airs—

An ass in everything but ears.'

Gay.

The master of the house was unable to contribute much more than his name to the propriety of the arrival of the suitors, and this made Wilmet the more determined that Geraldine should precede them. Nor, since the half-crown must be disbursed on an escort for her, did the housewifely conscience object to the expedition; for Wilmet could not but long to thank the Superior and Sister Constance, and to obtain Dr. Lee's advice as to future management. Her coming was great joy to Cherry, who had dreaded the meeting almost with a sense of guilt, though still hoping Felix had been silent on her motive; and Wilmet did not betray him, but only treated her sister with a mixture of almost shy tenderness and reverence. Nor did Cherry dare to ask a question as to Wilmet's own affairs, nor even about Ferdinand Travis, lest she should seem to be leading in that direction. However, Wilmet, in a persuasive tone, communicated that Ferdinand had been long without writing, and though Cherry tried to be sorry for Alda, her spirit quailed at the state of temper her sister evidently meant to prepare her for.

But fate was more kind than she expected. That very Saturday brought both gentlemen, and by the same train. They made each other out as they were leaving their bags at the Fortinbras Arms, and arrived together in marked contrast—the tall, dark, regular-featured, soft-eyed Life-guardsman, and the little sandy freckled sun-dried engineer; and thus two courtships had to be carried on in the two rooms, only supplemented by the narrow parallelogram of a garden! For Ferdinand Travis was back again, rather amused at the family astonishment at the rapidity of his journey to America, which to his Transatlantic notions of travel was as nothing, and indeed had been chiefly performed in a big steamer, where he could smoke to his heart's content.

For the first few days there was a good deal of restraint: Wilmet was more shy than in the unconscious days of Bexley; while John Harewood was devoid of his family's assurance and bonhomie, and so thoroughly modest and diffident as to risk nothing by precipitation in begging for a decision. Felix, inexperienced, and strongly sensible of his office as guardian of his sister's dignity, would not hint at the result of his investigations into Wilmet's sentiments; and it was to Geraldine that Captain Harewood's attentions were chiefly paid. Knowing Alda's resolute monopoly of her Cacique, Cherry at first held back, and restrained her keen enjoyment of real conversation; but she found Wilmet thankful to have the talk done for her, and content to sit at work, listening almost in silence, but proud that her Captain should be interested in her sister, and pleased to see Cherry's expressive face flash and sparkle all over for him. While Wilmet was at Miss Pearson's, Cherry was his chief resource; they read, drew, and talked, and in that half-hour's out-of-door exercise, which Dr. Lee had so strongly enjoined, his arm was at her service. They were soon on the borders of confidence, though never quite plunging over them. Perhaps the broad open-mouthed raillery at his home made the gentle reticence of the Underwoods the more agreeable to him; at any rate, he did not try to break through it, nor to presume beyond the step he had gained. Alda, who could best perhaps have acted as helper, had her own affairs to attend to; and they were evidently unsatisfactory, for Ferdinand was more than ever the silent melancholy Don, and she was to domestic eyes visibly cross, and her half-year at home had rendered her much less capable of concealing ill-humour. Something was owing to wear and suspense, together with the effects of the summer heat and confined monotonous life without change or luxury; but much was chargeable on the manifestations of temper to which she had given way in the home circle. She told Wilmet the trouble, which Ferdinand wished to have kept from open discussion till he had received a final statement of his means to lay before Felix. He had received no remittances since the spring, and on demanding his own share of the capital and investments, had found it, instead of the lion's, a ridiculously small portion. The whole fortunes of the house of Travis had been built on his mother's inheritance; but the accounts laid before him represented all the unprosperous speculations undertaken by his father, William, while the small ventures of his Uncle Alfred had, alongside of them, swelled into the huge wealth of which Ferdinand had been bred to believe himself the heir! So palpably outrageous was this representation, that he had persuaded himself that personal investigation on the spot would clear it up, or perhaps more truly, his blood was up, and he could not bear to be inactive. He had rushed over to New York, and of course he had been baffled. Exposure was of no use where sympathy was for the lucky rather than the duped and luckless, and where the Anglicised Life-guardsman could expect it least of all—at a time, too, when all business affairs were convulsed by the uncertainties of civil war. Alda could not believe at first that he had done his utmost, and seemed to have reproached him with weakness and mismanagement; but by her own account she had roused the innate lion. He would not tell her what had passed in the interview with his uncle, but he had shuddered over the remembrance; and when she upbraided him with not having gone far enough, he terrified her by the fierceness with which he had turned upon her, bidding her never recur to what she knew nothing about, and muttering to himself, 'Far enough—thank God I went no further, or I should not be here now!' and then falling into deep gloom. He had certainly made Alda afraid of him, and she burst into tears as she told Wilmet, declaring herself the most miserable girl in the world.

'No, that you can't be, Alda, while he is so good and true.'

'But he says he must sell out! Think of that! Never was anybody so taken in as I have been!'

'Don't talk so, Alda. It is just as if you had engaged yourself to a Life-guardsman and nothing else.'

'I wonder how you would like to be buried in some horrid wild place in America, where you would never see anybody!'

'One would not want to see anybody but him.'

'That's your nonsense! How tired of it one would be!'

'There would be no time. It would be so nice to do everything for him oneself!'

'In some horrid uncivilized place, with no servants! I'm not going to be a drudge. It is all very well for you, who like it, and have no notion of society, but for me—! And there he is furious to take me out. Men grow so wild and rough too in such places. You never saw anything blaze like his eyes!'

'I don't understand you. Could not you trust yourself anywhere with him?'

'You have no right to say such things,' pouted Alda, 'only because I have a little common prudence. Some one must have it!'

There was no denying that life in the far west would be a foolish thing either for or with Alda; and Felix thought so when Ferdinand came to him for consultation over the letters that made it finally clear that Alfred Travis had appropriated everything available but half a block of unreclaimed land on the wrong side of America, and a few thousands invested in Peter Brown's firm; and what was worse, the sudden failure of the supplies had occasioned serious debts. Ferdinand's own plan was to clear these off with the price of his commission, and take Alda out with him to rule in American luxury over the unbounded resources of the magnificent land, the very name and scent of which had awakened in him his old prairie-land instincts, and her absolute refusal and even alarm at his enjoyment had greatly mortified him. 'She should not even have to rough it,' he said. 'I could make her like a queen out there, if she would only believe it.'

Felix could not but think Alda might be wise, though it was not pretty wisdom. Go out alone and make the fortune? Ferdinand did not seem to think the separation possible. He said he would rather go to work in Peter Brown's office, where he had already a hold; and his familiarity with Spanish would secure him usefulness and promotion, and five or six years would bring him into a position to marry. He did not look fit for desk-work in London, but his mind was made up to any privation, so that he could be in reach of Alda, and hope to give her what he had once thought easily within his grasp.

Hearing this, Felix propounded an old longing of his—namely, to make the Pursuivant a daily paper, and use means for promptitude of intelligence, such as might neutralize the unpopularity it was incurring on behalf of Mr. Smith. Rumours of a rival paper were afloat; but if Ferdinand would throw in his capital, and undertake the joint editorship and proprietorship, the hold that the Pursuivant already had warranted quite success enough to permit an immediate marriage. There would be no need to be concerned with the shop; they might take a cottage in the country, and he need not ride in so often as every day. In fact, it was his capital rather than his personal assistance that was wanted. He caught at the notion. He was too Transatlantic to have any dignities to stand upon, and he said almost with tears in his eyes that he could never be so happy as in working with Felix; and he went off to the Fortinbras Arms, only lamenting that it was too late to tell Alda; while Felix, on his side, could not help knocking at Geraldine's door. Within he found another auditor, Wilmet, who still always helped Cherry to bed. 'It will be the making of the Pursuivant,' he said. How often I have sighed, "If I had but capital, or Mr. Froggatt enterprise!"'

'Ah, Felicissimo mio, that Pursuivant is as dear to you as any brother or sister of us all!'

'So it ought to be, for it has been the making of us.—Come Cherry, confess that you had rather see Pur triumph, than—'

'Than you at Vale Leston,' said Cherry, not knowing what a bolt she shot. 'It would be grand to steal a march on the enemy!'

'And safe?' asked Wilmet.

Felix demonstrated to the comprehending ears of his sisters the circulation that he could securely reckon upon.

'There would be an immense deal more to do,' said Cherry; but at that he smiled, full of vigour.

'True; but we should have a larger staff. There would be Fernan—'

'For the racing articles,' said Cherry dryly.

'And a good deal besides, which only needs application; and that he has.'

'He has great resolution,' said Cherry, 'but he always seems to me a sort of Christian panther of the wilderness; and you seem to be getting him into a cage.'

'Not such a cage as Peter Brown's office; and besides it is only when he is lashed up that the panther leaps about his den. Generally he is a quiet determined animal, with the practical Yankee element strong in him. It may be true, as Edgar says, that he does not see an inch on either side of his nose, but that only makes him go right away in the line he does see. I know he will work well.'

'If Alda—' said Cherry.

'Oh, she will be willing. A cottage in the country! Besides, it is the only reasonable possibility.'

'I should think it would satisfy her,' said Wilmet.

'And then—'

Everybody understood that 'And then.' It was Alda's pretension to be at the head of the family that was the chief obstacle to Wilmet's abdicating that post. Without her, Geraldine, stronger and less lame, might undertake the charge of the comparatively few permanently at home. Might indeed hardly expressed the amount of uncertainty as to her capability; and yet but for that 'And then,' Wilmet would hardly have yielded as she did the next day.

Stella had a blackberry fever. Possibly Wilmet's frugal regimen engendered a hankering for fruit, or it might have been the mere love of enterprise that rendered her eagerly desirous of an expedition to a lane where splendid blackberries were reported to grow. Since the day she had been lost, she had never been allowed to go out with Bernard; but in Lance she had acquired a much more complaisant play-fellow, who not only promised his escort to the lane, but the purchase of the sugar, and aid in the concoction of the jam; but he durst not venture till late in the day, and thereupon John Harewood suggested, 'Would not your sister be at liberty by that time?'

'Lance can take care of me,' said Stella; but in her eyes the whole romance of the expedition was destroyed by his acquiescence. 'We'll catch her as she comes out, and make her go with us.'

'Among all the girls?' laughed Cherry; and Captain Harewood coloured, shook his head, and shuddered.

'The girls won't hurt me,' said Lance, 'not if there were twenty hundred. I'll bring her from the very teeth of them. Jack may wait round the corner if he likes.'

The party waited, till their patience was worn to a thread, for the opening of the tall olive door, until Lance valiantly resolved on a single-handed assault, and had just mounted the steps, when it suddenly opened, and he found himself obstructing the path of a swarm of little girls and big, who all stared, most giggled, and some greeted him. To the least of these he confided that he wanted his sister, when she innocently piloted him to the school-room, where Wilmet, with her hat on, was keeping guard over three victims detained by unfinished tasks. Every one gazed at him as if he had been a sort of Actæon; but nothing daunted, he answered his sister's anxious exclamation. 'Nothing is the matter; but we are going for a walk, and want you.—Miss Maria,' he cried, as the sound of the unfeminine step and voice brought in one of the heads, 'please do let off these impositions, we do so want her!'

'What, you here! This is an invasion!' she added good-humouredly. 'Am I to take it as a convalescent's privilege?'

'Thank you, Ma'am,' said Lance, bowing with his audacious sweetness; 'and please let me have Wilmet. I'd do the impositions myself, only I don't know French.'

The victims tittered uncontrollably, and Miss Maria laughed, as one who, like her neighbours, descried why Wilmet was in request. 'I will attend to these exercises, Miss Underwood,' she said. 'You must not lose this fine evening for the idleness of these young ladies.'

'Indeed, Ma'am!' began Wilmet, in a blaze of colour. 'I never thought of such a thing.'

'I daresay not, my dear,' said Miss Maria; 'but now you had better do it. I wish you a pleasant walk.'

'Lance, how could you?' broke out Wilmet, as they descended the steps. 'I never was so ashamed in my life.'

'Never mind. We are going to get blackberries at Mile End Lane, and I shall lose Stella to a dead certainty if you don't come and look after her.'

'My dear Lance, I can't go all that way without their knowing it at home.'

'Oh! that's all settled with Cherry.'

'And where's Alda?'

'Off somewhere with her Don. Come, W. W., or who knows whether Stel and I shall ever come home?'

By this time they had reached the corner where Captain Harewood and Stella were lying perdu, and Wilmet made no more resistance, only keeping the little girl's not altogether willing hand till they came to the stile leading to the field and woodland, and then Stella's durance ended, and her adventures with Lance became as free as though no grave 'sister' had been near.

Perhaps, since Wilmet had perceived that surrender was her fate, she was willing that the summons should be over and a mutual understanding reached, so as to waste no more of the time already so short. However that might be, though the talk began with Lance's health and Cherry's talents, there was a tendency towards topics closer still; nor did she start aside, but rather listened pensively as to a strain that touched her quiet soul more deeply than she showed in word or gesture.

The blackberry lane was deep and hollow, the brambles outstretching their arching wreaths, laden with heavy clusters of shining fruit, glossy black, scarlet or green, sometimes with a lingering pearly flower. A step-ladder stile led down into it from the field, and on the topmost step, her back against the rail, sat Wilmet. On the lowest, turned at right angles to the first, was John Harewood, looking up to her; while scrambling on the bank, contending with the brambles, were the younger ones; Lance, unable to help now and then sending a furtive glance through the tangle.

It was a pretty sight. Sitting aloft, Wilmet was framed by an archway of meeting branches, with nothing but the pale opal of the evening sky behind the beautifully shaped head and shoulders, and the clear cut features, drooping just enough to enhance her own peculiar modest dignity, and give it a soft graciousness that had once been wanting. Her dress was the same in which Captain Harewood had first seen her—a plain black hat, a pale fawn-coloured skirt, and a loose open jacket over a white cambric vest and sleeves, only that now there had been a budding forth of dainty fresh knots of rose-coloured ribbon at the throat and down the front, as though a slight sensibility to the vanities as well as the cares of life had begun to dawn on the grave young house-mother.

Leaning back against the rough rail to assist the hand of the climber, John Harewood looked up with as much worship in his countenance as ever good man feels for the being he loves in all her maiden glory. Thus they had been for some moments, only broken by the children's distant calls, till the fervent words broke from him, 'May I not speak now?'

No word of reply sounded, but the delicate lips quivered and parted; the eyes were cast down, and seemed to swim in a soft mist of brightness; the queenly head bent, and the roseate tint on the cheek deepened and spread, while something came over the face that caused the low glad exclamation, 'You sweetest, I do believe you can love me!'

A tremulous smile, a glitter of tears on the eye-lashes—a whisper, 'You won't let me be able to help it!'

Then the hands were clasped, and no words but 'Thank you' would come to the young man's lips; and then, and the sound reminded him, he bowed his head, adding, 'Thank God!'

'Thank God!' echoed Wilmet softly. 'For indeed,' she added, as she let her eyes fully meet his ardent gaze, 'I know you will help me to do whatever may be His Will.'

'He helping me,' said John Harewood; and there was a reverent silence of untold peace and bliss, first interrupted by his long sigh of infinite relief and joy; and then, as he looked and looked with all his soul in his eyes, an exclamation, almost in spite of himself, 'You beautiful creature, you are mine indeed!'

Her colour deepened, but her lips moved into an odd little smile, out of which came the words, 'Isn't that rather foolish?'

'I couldn't help it—I beg your pardon,' said he, reddening. 'You do look so lovely! but indeed it is not the externals only, but what looks through.'

'And that is what makes me afraid,' said Wilmet, as the dew gathered on her eye-lashes. 'I don't think I'm so nice as you take me for.'

'Probably you don't,' he said, smiling.

'But just hear me,' she said, laying her hand on his, as if to silence him. 'You ought to know what all the others would tell you if they were not too kind. I know they all feel me strict, and managing, and domineering! Yes, it makes you laugh, but I really am. I don't think you would have liked me at all if you had not seen me out of my usual life, with only Lance—' and as all she said only made him press her hand the closer—'You see, I've always had to do things. Ever since I was a little girl I have had to keep order, great boys and all, and I know it has made me disagreeable;' then, in answer to some sound more incredulously negative than words, 'Yes indeed! Felix and all go to Cherry with whatever comes very near them. She hasn't been hardened and sharpened and dried up like me, and wasn't stupid to begin with.'

'Cherry is very clever, but she is—not—'

'Now don't. I know how it is. I know I'm horribly pretty, and I've been a wonder always for keeping the house going, and doing for them all, and so you fancy me everything charming; but I do so wish you could really know, as my brothers do, how it takes out of one all that is nice and sweet, and that people like.'

'People?' said John, smiling; but seeing that a mirthful even though a loving answer was not what she wanted, he gravely said, 'I do understand, dearest, that you have had to be too much of an authority to be altogether the companion and confidante that Geraldine is free to be, but perhaps I feel that this renders you more wholly and altogether my own.'

'Oh!'—a strange half sob—'do you know, I had just begun to know how solitary I was when Lance was so happy to get Robina, when you—'

'And if I told you all, you would know that I was feeling a certain loneliness at home, and that if you had asked my sisters, they would have said that Jack was not the harmonious element he appeared. There—there's a pleasing prospect!'

'But you'll not let me be masterful?' said Wilmet earnestly.

'Just as much as is good for me—for us,' he said, smiling. Then after a moment's silence, he took out of his pocket a little box, and making a table of her lap, took out a ring of twined ruby and diamonds, such as could not but startle the instincts of Wilmet's soul.

'Oh, it is a great deal too beautiful! Please, I couldn't—'

'You must. It was my mother's.'

'Then she cannot like to part with it.'

'Did you not know that she died when I was five years old? Look!' and he showed where within the lid of the box was written, 'For my Little Johnny's Wife. August 1839. L. H.'

'Ought you not to keep it till—' faltered Wilmet, growing crimson as she found what she was saying.

'No,' he said decidedly, 'not after this. When I spoke to my father that Sunday evening, he unlocked his desk and gave me this, which I had not seen since I remember playing with it on my mother's bed. You will wear it, dearest. You will let me have the pleasure of knowing you have it on.'

The answer was the drawing off of her glove; and he fitted it on, but it was rather loose. 'I am afraid it will want a guard,' he said.

'I'll ask Felix whether I may take one of Mamma's,' she said. For the shapely notable fingers had never worn a ring before this almost sacred pledge; and the few jewels either too valuable or not valuable enough for the parents to have parted with in times of need had never been touched.

'Do,' he said; 'I shall like that. The year 1839. Was not that the year a certain little girl was born?'

'The month. Our birth-day is on the 19th.' And the coincidence gave all the foolish delight such facts do under the circumstances.

'Was this long before she died?' asked Wilmet.

'The last day of that August. You never saw her brass in the cloister?'

'No; I never guessed that you were not Mrs. Harewood's son, though I wondered at your being so unlike the rest.'

'She has been kindness itself,' he warmly said. 'My father did well both for himself and me in marrying.'

'Tell me of your own mother,' said Wilmet, looking from the sparkling stones to the initials. 'L.– What was her name?'

'Lucy. Lucy Oglandby. My father was tutor at Oglandby Hall. There was a long attachment, through much opposition; and even when he was made priest-vicar after waiting six years, her father could not consent. After six years more, when her health was failing, he gave a sort of sanction on his death-bed. The rest of the family contrived to get her fortune so tied up that after her death it was of no use to any one till I came of age. She only lived seven years after her marriage, and then the Oglandbys wanted to take possession of me, and I fancy that drove my father into marrying.'

'Was it with them you went to stay?'

'Yes, my father makes a point of it; and they have a turn for patronizing me, if I would turn my back on home.'

'Now I understand better,' said Wilmet.

'You understand how much you were wanting to me,' he said, rightly interpreting the words. 'After five years' absence, while my sisters were growing up, you can perceive that dear, fond, and hearty as our house is, it did not fulfil all that perhaps I had been rather unreasonable in expecting. O Wilmet, this time of leave would have been very different if you had not come to the precincts!'

And so they fell back on the exquisite time present, which neither wished to disturb by looking beyond; and perhaps John felt as though his bird had scarcely perched, and any endeavours to hold it might make it flutter loose, while she was too glad of the calm and repose to renew the struggle between conflicting claims.

At last, with basket laden with dark fruit, and lips vying with the babes in the wood, Stella was launched on them by Lance, when his sense of time overpowered his half shy, half diverted respect for their bliss. He was very curious, but had to be satisfied with Captain Harewood's manner of tossing Stella over the stile, and bright look at himself.

They did not get into the town till the chimes of half-past seven were pealing. Captain Harewood hurried into the hotel, to prepare for the evening; and Wilmet was mounting the stairs, still under the spell of her newly-found joy, when she was startled by Alda's voice in a key of querulous anger.

'Exactly like you, always laying out for attention.'

'What's this?' said Wilmet, as she saw Alda in her habit, standing with her back to the open door, and Geraldine leaning on the table, trembling and tearful, crimson and burning even to passion in her panting reply, 'I don't know—except that he helped me in from the garden.'

'That's what I say,' retorted Alda. 'She is always putting herself forward, to be interesting, and get waited on. All affectation. I don't know such a flirt anywhere.'

'Hush, Alda! you are insulting Cherry,' said Wilmet, in her tone of command.

'Take care of yourself, Wilmet,' cried Alda; 'it is the way she goes on all day with Captain Harewood—reading poetry, and drawing, and all.'

'Captain Harewood knows,' said Wilmet, coming to the support of the quivering Geraldine, 'that the kinder he is to Cherry the better I like it.'

'Oh, if you do, it is your own concern. I only spoke for your sake.' And Alda marched off, while Wilmet's strong tender arms helped Cherry into her own room, and tended her through one of those gusts, part repentant, part hysterical, which had belonged to her earlier girlhood, though the present was now enhanced by the tumult of insulted maidenliness. Formerly, Wilmet had not treated these attacks on the soft system, but now all her bracing severity was gone. Greatly incensed with Alda, she gave her whole self to sympathy with the victim, showing herself so ineffably sweet and loving, that Cherry felt a thrill of delicious surprise; and as her eye lit on the glittering ring, a little ecstatic cry, still slightly hysterical, welcomed the token.

'O Wilmet, oh! You have! You have—'

'To be sure I have,' answered Wilmet, not in the least heeding what she said, in her anxiety to calm her sister. 'It is all right, if only you will not go and be silly about it.'

The woman was so much more than her words, that their odd simplicity, coming from the grand-looking figure bending over her in tender solicitude, touched Cherry the more, and she threw her arms round her sister's neck, whispering, 'Oh! I am so glad!'

Poor Wilmet! At that moment all her gladness had gone into a weight like lead on her heart, though it only made her more gentle. 'Dear Cherry,' she softly said, 'don't talk of anything to upset you. Will you be good and lie quite still while I take off my things, and then I'll come and dress you? You must not be knocked up to-night.'

'Oh! I had much rather stay here!'

'No indeed! John would be so disappointed. He does like you so much, and I always depend on you to make it pleasant for him. You can't send word that Alda has been scolding you.'

'Oh dear! why can't I behave decently to her the moment we are alone together?'

'Don't begin on that, for pity's sake, or you'll get crying again,' broke out Wilmet, in her natural voice. ''Tis she can't behave properly to anybody—that's all; so don't think any more about anything, like a good child, but lie still till I come back.'

So up went Wilmet, not rejoicing in her room-mate, whom she found, as usual, all injured innocence and self-justification.

'You have been petting Cherry all this time! She is quite spoilt among you! It is quite true what I said, though she didn't like it. In society, I never saw a more arrant flirt, with her pathetic ill-used airs. Why, Ferdinand actually found fault to-day with my manner to her!'

Save for the effects, Wilmet was glad to hear it. 'Well, Alda, it is not always kind.'

'I only don't fuss and coax her; I see through her better than you do. She is the sharp one. As I told Ferdinand, it is I who have reason to complain of his manner to her, only I know it is not his fault. If there were no other objection to this preposterous scheme of Felix's, she would be a reason against it.'

'For shame, Alda! You don't consider what you are saying of your sister.'

'I do!' said Alda. 'I have been more in the world than you, Wilmet, and I know what comes of sticking oneself down close to one's family, especially when there is that sort of spoilt invalid, backed up in all kinds of unreasonable expectations. I advise you to take care, Wilmet; you don't know what goes on in your absence. I should not wonder if it never came to an engagement after all.'

At that moment Felix's step and knock were at the door. Wilmet went to it, and both her hands were clasped in her brother's. 'My Wilmet, my dear, this is well!'

Then Alda turned from her glass and understood. 'What? He has spoken? O Wilmet, and you never told me!'

'I had not time.'

'And what a splendid ring! but it is not a proper engaged-ring. You can't wear it.'

'I must! He wishes it. It was his mother's.—Felix, may I have one of Mamma's for a guard?'