CHAPTER XVII.

"ARE YOU GOING TO MARRY LORD MAXWELL?"

Carolyn Ffolliott was sitting on the piazza at Savin Hill, sitting in much the same position and with the same surroundings as when we first met her in the opening chapter of these chronicles. Only it was a year later. A year usually writes very little on the human face, though it may have brought experiences which will in time make their imprint visible.

Carolyn was reading; her brother Leander was sitting on the lawn, trying to unravel the tail of a kite; her mother was walking slowly back and forth, watching her son. There was the sea, just as it had been; and apparently there were the same sails, and the same coal-barges drawn by tugs, and the same steamers far away in the offing.

"It's rather stupid here this summer, don't you think?" remarked Mrs. Ffolliott; "and I'm afraid Leander isn't having as good a time as usual. Are you, Lee dear?"

"Yep, bully," was the prompt reply. "Only there's Prue ain't here, you know."

As if as a sort of comment upon this remark, there was the sound of steps at the other end of the veranda, and a young woman in a bicycling suit came walking forward. There was a bright color on her face, but then she had been "biking," and it was warm.

Carolyn, as she saw Prudence, rose quickly, her own face growing red, a spark coming to her eyes.

Prudence came on, going straight to Mrs. Ffolliott.

"Dear aunty," she exclaimed, "I've wanted to see you so"--kiss--"that I finally decided I would come over"--kiss--"and I was sure you couldn't bear any malice after all this long while. You dear Aunt Tishy, you, you were always as much like a mother as my own mother herself; and then you didn't have rheumatism, either; so you were better-natured, you know."

Here the speaker laughed excitedly. She still held her aunt's hand in both her own. She did not seem, at this moment, to see her cousin, who was gazing steadily at her.

"You're not going to turn me out, are you, Aunt Tishy? You don't know how I've missed Savin Hill. It's more like home to me than any place in the world. You won't turn me out?"

In the bottom of her heart Mrs. Ffolliott was thankful for this diversion. She remembered, first, that time did not usually hang heavily where Prudence was; but then, immediately she remembered, secondly, that Prudence had run away with Carolyn's lover on the eve of their marriage; she had not forgotten that,--how could she? But--oh, dear, how complicated things were!

She now kissed her niece with an air of not knowing what she was doing, as indeed she hardly did know. Then she began by saying she was sure, she was very sure she was sure--and just here Leander dashed up and cried out that this was the jolliest thing that could happen, and he'd get his wheel, and they'd go down the east road, and he'd beat her all holler in no time.

"Perhaps you'll beat me, but you won't beat me holler, I'm positive," she responded.

She shook hands with the boy; then she stooped and kissed his forehead; whereupon, to the amazement of the witnesses, Leander flung his arms about her neck and kissed her cheek resoundingly.

When Prudence lifted her head, the girl standing there watching her was surprised to see that there were tears in her cousin's eyes.

We are often surprised when people whom we think rather wicked and false show signs of natural feeling or affection.

Carolyn was moved, too. She was a tender-hearted creature, who could never bear to see anything suffer; and she was sure that Rodney was not happy with his wife. No man who looked as he did was a happy man. If she had believed that he was happy, would she have been able to do as she did now? Who can tell? The human heart, besides being "desperately wicked," is a very mysterious organ.

Carolyn advanced a few steps, and the two looked into each other's eyes for the first time since Prudence had been Rodney's wife. In the eyes of Prudence were pleading, and deprecation, and just enough unhappiness to win upon her cousin; and all these feelings were also truly in her heart. She was one of those subtly wise women who know how to make use of genuine emotion.

Carolyn did not put out her hand. She could not quite do that,--not yet, anyway. She said, "How do you do, Prudence?" in quite the ordinary way, and as if the two had met the day before, and nothing particular had happened since.

"Very well, thanks. Are you well, Cousin Caro?" was the response.

To this Carolyn answered that her health had never been better. Then Mrs. Ffolliott, with some nervousness in her manner, asked after Rodney's health, adding that she had heard very distressing rumors about him.

Carolyn looked away from Prudence as the latter made reply:

"Rodney, poor boy, is getting to be a terrible hypochondriac. I don't know what we shall do with him. We must all try to amuse him."

As she pronounced the word "all" she glanced markedly at Carolyn, who was gazing off to the horizon.

"Then he isn't really ill?" asked Carolyn, turning calmly towards her guest and speaking as if referring to some stranger.

"She certainly has good stuff in her," was the mental comment of Prudence as she answered, aloud, "Not very ill, I'm sure. A few functional disturbances of some of the organs, I forget just what ones; the liver, I imagine, and heart."

"I should think being at the seashore might benefit him," said Mrs. Ffolliott, solicitously.

"Oh, yes, of course it will."

Thus Prudence dismissed the subject.

She walked to where Carolyn had taken her place immediately after greeting her, a pillar of the piazza against which she was leaning.

"Caro," she said, softly, "let me see you a moment, please."

Carolyn showed the surprise she felt. She lifted her brows interrogatively as she asked, "Do you mean alone?"

"Oh, yes; what can one say with Leander present?"

"Let us go down to the beach, then," answered Carolyn, and the two started, being followed by Leander, until that person consented to go back on condition that Prue would return and ride a race with him that very morning.

On the ridge of dry sand above high-water mark Carolyn and her cousin sat down. Neither spoke for some time; Carolyn was resolved not to be the first to break the silence. She would not aid Prudence in whatever she had to say, and she was so weakly human that she could hardly help shrinking a little away from her as she sat beside her. But she did not shrink; she sat with that utter quiet of which she was capable, hardly an eyelash stirring.

As for Prudence, she put one hand down in the warm sand and burrowed into its depths, trying to absorb herself in the action. She had come on an impulse to see Carolyn and to gain an entrance to Savin Hill again. It had been uncomfortable to have to reply that she did not know, when people put inquiries to her about the Ffolliotts. And she was tired of suffering this sort of banishment. She wanted her aunt and cousin to be reconciled to her. People in the end always thus far had been obliged to become reconciled to her. This, to be sure, was rather a difficult matter.

How very irritating Caro's face was! This she felt as she glanced at that face calmly contemplating the movements of a dory which a man was rowing out to his fishing-smack.

"Caro, dear," she at last begun.

Carolyn turned promptly towards her, and waited.

This waiting was, for some reason, inexpressibly exasperating to Prudence, whose face flushed, and who was obliged to wait on her own account before she could speak as she wished to speak. Evidently she was to receive not the slightest help from her companion.

With the rapidity of lightning, Prudence changed her plan as to what she would say. There came a certain line on either side of her mouth, a line which Carolyn had seen before and wondered about.

"Do you want to know the very inmost, secret reason for my coming, Caro?" she asked.

She removed her hand from the sand and carefully dusted her fingers with her handkerchief, smiling to herself as she did so.

"If you'd like to tell," was the answer.

"I'm dying to tell," she said, turning now fully towards her cousin and fixing her eyes upon her face.

"Then," said Caro, placidly, "if you're dying to tell, I'll try to wait until you speak."

Prudence felt her fingers tingle with a vixenish desire to slap the face before her. Really, was Caro so provoking as this in the old days?

"Well, then, I came to congratulate you, my dear."

"Congratulate me?"

"Certainly. I hear one thing said every time your name is mentioned."

Here Prudence came to a full stop, and tried to be patient until Carolyn should ask a question. But Carolyn resumed her watching of the man in the dory, who had now nearly reached the smack.

Prudence began to plunge her hand once more in the sand. Her face was growing red. What had changed matters between her and the girl beside her? Formerly she had easily maintained the ascendency; now, indefinitely, she felt that she had lost this ascendency.

There was color in Carolyn's face,--her blood she could not control,--but her features were as calm as if she could not think or feel. This one fact made Prudence afraid that when she did speak she might stammer from sheer anger and astonishment. Was this the cousin whom she had considered a sort of namby-pamby, goody-goody girl who would be easily controlled?

It wasn't of the least use to wait for some word from Carolyn; so Prudence said:

"You seem so calm, I suppose everything is all settled."

"What is settled?"

"Your marriage to Lord Maxwell."

For reply Carolyn gave a glance of contemptuous interrogation.

"Oh, yes," Prudence reasserted, "and let me tell you that every girl is not so lucky."

No response.

"I suppose you're flesh and blood, and not wood!" she cried, indignantly.

"I don't think I'm wood."

"I've a great mind to pinch you and see."

"Very well."

"Caro, do you remember that time when you told me how you loved Rodney?"

Now the girl winced visibly beneath this cruel thrust. But she answered, promptly, "Yes."

"Well, I don't believe a word of it; I don't believe you could ever love anybody,--lucky creature that you are!"

Carolyn looked for one instant at the eyes fixed upon her. Then Prudence suddenly threw her arms about her cousin, and exclaimed, with an outburst of tears:

"Oh, do forgive me! I'm half crazed! I don't know what I'm saying! I have to suffer so, and nobody seems to think a woman like me can suffer!"

Carolyn remained rigidly quiet; she would not pretend to respond to this embrace; inwardly she turned sick at it. Yes, of course Prudence could suffer; and she ought to suffer.

Carolyn was astonished at the vigor of her own resentment. And why had Rodney Lawrence's wife come here? To spy out the land? Well, she should not be much rewarded if that had been her object.

Finding that her embrace and her tears seemed productive of very little, Prudence sat up and put her handkerchief to her face for a moment.

"I know," she said from its folds, "that there are some things a woman cannot forgive. But, though I stole your lover away from you, I've not been supremely happy since. And I know you used to pity unhappiness."

"I hope I'm still sorry for any one who is unhappy," said Carolyn, steadily.

"I suppose you're going to marry Lord Maxwell; aren't you?"

This question was put with abrupt rapidity, and Prudence dropped her handkerchief and darted a look at the face beside her.

Carolyn could not tell why she suddenly resolved not to reply to this question; perhaps she made this resolution because of the eager curiosity which leaped from her cousin's eyes as she spoke. She did not answer; she averted her face lest Prudence should read the truth there, but she was conscious of a sense of shame as she did so.

"Won't you tell me?" persisted Prudence.

"I would rather not say anything on the subject," was the response.

Prudence's eyes flashed fire. Until now she had not in the least believed the rumor.

Was this girl--this--this--oh, was she to become Lady Maxwell, while she, Prudence Ffolliott, had cut herself off from such a congenial career as that with a husband whom she could twist this way and that--while she, because of the passion of a moment, was tied to a man who was tired of her, and whom just now she was sure she hated? Thoughts like these rushed hotly through her mind in a confused troop.

So, after all, Carolyn was just like other girls. Why, of course she was. Why shouldn't she be? And Maxwell was now very wealthy. Prudence sat up straight. She thrust her handkerchief into the pocket of her little cycling-jacket.

"I beg your pardon," she said, with great suavity. "I didn't know but that you might be willing to tell me. I suppose I must wait, however, until the announcement is made."

Having said this, she rose and brushed the sand from her garments. She remarked that she would run up to the house and have a spin with Leander.

Carolyn walked up with her, and the two conversed affably, and parted with great politeness on both sides.

But as Prudence mounted her wheel outside, her hands trembled, and she was white instead of being flushed.

When Leander returned, he informed his mother and sister that Prue wasn't any good any more, and that he had beat her all holler without half trying. Also, as an afterthought, he said they had met Lord Maxwell on his wheel at the turn in the east road, and that the Britisher had gone on home with Prue.