Chapter 28 - Page 2

Thus she was two persons, but she was also a third, who
addressed them in clerical tones.

"Ivie McLean," she said as solemnly as tho' she were the Rev. Mr.
Dishart, "do you take this woman to be thy lawful wedded wife?" With
almost indecent haste she answered herself, "I do."

"Alison Cray," she said next, "do you take this man to be thy lawful
wedded husband?" "I do."

Just then the door shut softly; and Gavinia ran to see who had been
listening, with the result that she hid herself in the coal-cellar.

While she was there, Miss Ailie and Mr. McLean were sitting in the
blue-and-white room very self-conscious, and Miss Ailie was speaking
confusedly of anything and everything, saying more in five minutes than
had served for the previous hour, and always as she slackened she read
an intention in his face that started her tongue upon another journey.
But, "Timid Ailie," he said at last, "do you think you can talk me
down?" and then she gave him a look of reproach that turned
treacherously into one of appeal, but he had the hardihood to continue;
"Ailie, do you need to be told what I want to say?"

Miss Ailie stood quite still now, a stiff, thick figure, with a soft,
plain face and nervous hands. "Before you speak," she said, nervously,
"I have something to tell you that--perhaps then you will not say it.

"I have always led you to believe," she began, trembling, "that I am
forty-nine. I am fifty-one."

He would have spoken, but the look of appeal came back to her face,
asking him to make it easier for her by saying nothing. She took a pair
of spectacles from her pocket, and he divined what this meant before she
spoke. "I have avoided letting you see that I need them," she said.
"You--men don't like--" She tried to say it all in a rush, but the words
would not come.

"I am beginning to be a little deaf," she went on. "To deceive you about
that, I have sometimes answered you without really knowing what you
said."

"Anything more, Ailie?"

"My accomplishments--they were never great, but Kitty and I thought my
playing of classical pieces--my fingers are not sufficiently pliable
now. And I--I forget so many things."

"But, Ailie--"

"Please let me tell you. I was reading a book, a story, last winter, and
one of the characters, an old maid, was held up to ridicule in it for
many little peculiarities that--that I recognized as my own. They had
grown upon me without my knowing that they made me ridiculous, and now
I--I have tried, but I cannot alter them."