Poor Miss Theodora! She could never have imagined herself so indifferent
to anything that concerned Kate as she was at first to the news of her
engagement. But at length, after she had several times seen Kate and Ben
together, she wondered that she had not long before realized their
fitness for each other. Perhaps, after all, she had made a mistake in
believing that Kate and Ernest could have been happy together.
Certainly, she had been very blind in her estimate of Kate's feelings.
She never knew, for pride forbade the young girl to dwell on the rather
painful subject, how difficult it was for Kate and Ben to gain Mrs.
Digby's consent to their engagement. It could hardly be said, indeed,
that she gave her consent. She simply submitted to the inevitable. Kate
was of age, and had her own money, an independence, if not a fortune;
and Mrs. Digby, after using every argument, decided to make the best of
what she could not help. Ralph, at least, would commit no social folly
like this of his sister's--Ralph, that model of discretion and mirror of
good form. She did not even, as Miss Theodora had dreaded, reprove her
cousin for allowing this love affair to develop unchecked by her.
Whatever she may have thought of Miss Theodora's blindness, she decided
to make Kate's engagement a family affair--an affair of her own small
family, in which, apparently, she intended not to include her cousin.
Then Miss Theodora, feeling her heart soften as she watched Kate and
Ben, wondered if she had not been too hard with Ernest. Ought she not to
show some interest in Eugenie? Though this query never shaped itself in
words spoken to Kate or any one else, it pressed itself upon her
constantly. A sentence from Ernest's last letter haunted her: "I cannot
be perfectly happy until I know that you and Eugenie have met. She has
not written to me for some time, and I am almost sure this is because
she is so much hurt at the coldness of my relatives. I did expect
something different from you and Kate."
This letter touched Miss Theodora more than a little; but Kate made no
response when her cousin read it to her. Though she could not tell
exactly why, Kate's silence annoyed her. She even began to wonder what
she should wear when she made the first call, and she recalled all
Ernest had said about Eugenie's critical taste in dress. She was glad
that Kate had insisted on her having an autumn street gown made at a
fairly fashionable dressmaker's.
Miss Chatterwits happened to be sewing at Miss Theodora's on the day
when the latter made her decision about Eugenie.
In spite of the new dressmaker, Miss Theodora still had some work for
the old seamstress. Her method of working always afforded Kate great
amusement.
For, as she talked, the points of a dozen pins projected from between
her teeth, where she held them for convenience. She still wore close to
her side the self-same little brown velvet cushion, or it looked like
the same one, which had always astonished Ernest by its capacity. Though
it was hardly an inch thick, Miss Chatterwits had a habit of running
into its smooth surface long darning needles and shawl pins, as well as
fine needles and pins. What became of them was always a matter of deep
conjecture to Ernest, for they were sometimes embedded until neither
head nor eyes could be seen. It seemed as if they must have pierced Miss
Chatterwits' bony waist. Could she possibly be so thin as not to have
any flesh to feel the pricks? Bones, of course, have no feeling, used to
think Ernest, watching with a kind of fascination each motion of Miss
Chatterwits' hand, as she thrust half a dozen long pins into the
unresisting cushion.
On this important day when Miss Theodora began to feel a change of heart
toward Eugenie, she sat down to help Miss Chatterwits with her work.
"There's a morning paper," said the seamstress. "Tom Fetchum handed it
to me on his way down town; said he had read it all but the deaths and
marriages, which he knew I'd like to see. I ain't had time to look at it
yet, so you might read them to me, Miss Theodora."
Miss Theodora, putting on her glasses, turned to the appointed place.
"Not a soul I know among those deaths! I'm disappointed," said Miss
Chatterwits, after Miss Theodora had read the list. "Why, what is it?"
she added; for Ernest's aunt was looking up with a curiously dazed
expression, as she handed the paper to Miss Chatterwits, and pointed to
a brief notice:
"KURTZ--DIGBY.--At Troy, N. Y., on the 24th inst., by Rev. John Brown,
Eugenie, daughter of Simon Kurtz of Boston, to Ralph, son of the late
Stuart Digby of the same city."
"Well, I never!" said Miss Chatterwits. "An elopement, I do believe! I'm
glad I'm most through this skirt, so's I can run over to Mrs. Fetchum's
and tell her. I guess she didn't read the paper very carefully this
morning. If she'd seen it she'd 'a' been over here to find out how we
took it. It's always safe to read the papers.
"Well, how do you feel, Miss Theodora?" she asked at last.
But Miss Theodora never told any one exactly how she felt when she heard
of the strange ending of Ernest's love affair. To Ernest, of course, she
gave a full measure of sympathy; and she was almost sorry that, as
things had turned out, he would never know that she had made up her mind
to make Eugenie's acquaintance. Since she had, though for only a brief
time, almost changed her point of view, she felt herself to be
hypocritical in receiving his praise for her acumen: "You knew better
than I what she was like."
Kate was indignant at her brother's treachery.
"I shall never forgive him for deceiving Ernest so. But I can't say that
I'm surprised. I knew that she and Ralph had had a great flirtation even
before she met Ernest. It was that which made me so unwilling to call
on her. But I never thought that Ralph would marry her. Mamma, I
believe, is going to receive her as if everything had been perfectly
above board. But I know it's only pride that leads her to take this
stand. She really feels the whole thing very keenly."
Ben, when he heard of the elopement, could not help recalling the
episode of the stolen skates, and he wondered if Ralph had made love to
Eugenie from the mischievous motives by which he had so often in their
boyhood allowed himself to be influenced against Ernest. If so, he was
likely to be the meter out of his own punishment. For a bride stolen
merely to annoy another person is likely to make more trouble than any
other stolen possession.
Strangely enough, Ernest himself recovered most quickly from the
mortification of the whole affair. There was at first the shock to his
pride, mingled with contempt for the deceit practised on him by Ralph
and Eugenie. But he was so young as to recover quickly, and the element
of contempt helped him to brush the whole matter aside.
You, perhaps, may think less well of Ernest for finding consolation so
readily, but you must remember that he never was a sentimentalist.
Moreover, neither you nor I may know exactly what the workings of his
mind may have been. Doubtless there was many a sleepless night, and many
a bitter tear, before he was ready to show a stern front to the world.
In Boston it might have been a much harder thing for him to bear the
blow which fate had leveled at him. After all, Massachusetts and
Colorado are far apart; and if propinquity is fate bearing, distance and
separation are more destructive of sentimental illusions than the
average sentimentalist admits. In Ernest's case, hard work was
absorbing, and even Grace Easton, William Easton's pretty young
daughter, was a long time in winning the place which she afterward held
in his heart.
[Illustration]