After breakfast next morning Sarella, not quite accidentally, found
herself alone with Gore.
"You gentlemen," she said, "did go to bed sometime, I suppose. But I
thought you never _were_ going to stop your talk--and to tell you the
truth, I wished my bedroom was farther away, or had a thicker wall. _I_
go to bed to sleep. You were at it two hours and twenty minutes."
Gore duly apologized for the postponement of her sleep, and wondered
_how_ thin the wooden partition might be between her room and that in
which the long discussion had taken place.
"These partitions of thin boarding are wretched," she informed him,
"especially as they are only stained. If they were even papered it would
prevent the tobacco-smoke coming through the cracks where the boards
have shrunk." Gore could not help smiling.
"I think," he said, "you want to let me know that our talk was not quite
inaudible."
"No, it wasn't. Not quite. I'll tell you how much was audible. That you
were talking about Mariquita, and that you were arguing, and I think you
were both angry. I am sure _he_ was."
"So was I; though not so loud, I hope."
"Look here, Mr. Gore. You weren't loud at all. But I knew you were
angry. And so you ought to have been. Why on earth can't he keep his
fingers out of the pot? You and Mariquita didn't interfere in his love
affair, and he'll do no good interfering in yours."
Gore laughed.
"So you heard it all!" he said.
"No. If you had talked as loud as he did I should. But you didn't. It
was easy to hear him say that to-morrow he would go and order Mariquita
to marry you. If that had been the end of it, I just believe I should
have dressed myself and come in to tell him not to be silly. But it
wasn't the end. Was it?"
"No. To stop _that_ plan I promised I would propose to Mariquita
to-day--only he was to say nothing about it to her first."
"Well, then, I don't know as he has done any harm. You might do worse."
"I might do better."
"What better?"
"Wait a bit."
"I'm not so sure. I don't know that any _harm_ would come of waiting a
bit, and I daresay it's all very pleasant meanwhile. But you can go on
with your love-making after you're engaged just as well as before."
"Ah! If we _were_ engaged!"
"Pfush!" quoth Sarella, inventing a word which stood her in stead of
"Pshaw."
Gore had to laugh again, and no doubt her good-natured certainty
encouraged him--albeit he did not believe she knew Mariquita.
"What o'clock shall you propose?" she inquired coolly.
Of course he could not tell her.
"I guess," she said, "it will be between two and three. Dinner at
twelve. Digestion and preliminaries, 12:45 to 1:45. Proposal 2:45 say.
You will be engaged by 2:50."
As before, Gore liked the encouragement though very largely discounting
its worth.
"On the whole," Sarella observed, "I daresay my old man has done
good--as he has made himself scarce. If he hadn't threatened to put his
own foot in it, you might have gone on staring up at Mariquita in the
stars till she was forty, and then it might have struck you that you
could get on fine without her."
Sarella evidently thought that nothing was to be done before the time
she had indicated; during the morning she was in evidence as usual, but
immediately after dinner she retreated to her studies, and was seen no
more for a long time.
Gore boldly announced his intention to be idle and told Mariquita she
must be idle too, begging her to ride with him. To himself it seemed as
if everyone about the place must see that something was in the wind; but
the truth was that everyone had been so long expecting something
definite to happen without hearing of it, that some of them had decided
that Gore and Mariquita had fixed up their engagement already at some
unsuspected moment, and the rest had almost ceased to expect to hear
anything.
As to Mariquita, she was clearly unsuspicious that this afternoon was to
have any special significance for her. Always cheerful and
unembarrassed, she was exactly her usual self, untroubled by the
faintest presentiment of fateful events. Her ready agreement to Gore's
proposal that they should ride together was, he knew well, of no real
good omen. It made him have a guilty feeling, as if he were getting her
out under false pretences.
There was so happy a light of perfect, confiding friendliness upon her
face that it seemed almost impossible to cloud it by the suggestion of
anything that would be different from simple friendship. But must it be
clouded by such a suggestion? "Clouding" means darkening; was it really
impossible for that light, so trusting and so contented, of
unquestioning friendship, to be changed without being rendered less
bright? Must Gore assume her to be specially incapable of an affection
deeper than even friendship? No; of anything good she was capable; no
depths of love could be beyond her, and he was sure that her nature was
one of deep affectionateness, left unclaimed till now. The real
loneliness of her life, he told himself, had lain in this very depth of
unclaimed lovingness. And he told himself, too, not untruly, that she
had been less lonely of late.
Gore might, he felt, hope to awake all that dormant treasure of
affection--if he had time! But he had no longer time. He did truly,
though not altogether, shrink from the task he had set himself to-day.
He had a genuine reluctance to risk spoiling that happy content of hers;
yet he could not say it was worse than a risk. There was the counter
possibility of that happy content changing into something lovelier.
That she was not incapable of love he told himself with full assurance,
and he was half-disposed to believe that she was one who would never
love till asked for her love.
Sarella might be nearer right than he had been. She was of much coarser
fibre than Mariquita, and perhaps he had made too much of that, for she
was a woman at all events, and shrewd, watchful and a looker-on with the
proverbial advantages (maybe) over the actors themselves. Sarella knew
how Mariquita spoke of him, though he did not believe that between the
two cousins there had been confidences about himself; not real
confidences, though Sarella was just the girl to "chaff" Mariquita about
himself, and would know how her chaff had been taken. At all events, Don
Joaquin must be forestalled; his blundering interference must be
prevented, and it could only be prevented by Gore keeping his word and
speaking himself.