Chapter 37 - Page 2

time.

But it was not till she had been left to herself for a full five months, and the blue-bells and ragged-robins of the following year were again making themselves common to the rambling eye, that he directly addressed her. She was tying up a group of tall flowering plants in the garden: she knew that he was behind her, but she did not turn. She had subsided into a placid dignity which enabled her when watched to perform any little action with seeming composure-- very different from the flutter of her inexperienced days.

'Are you never going to turn round?' he at length asked good-humouredly.

She then did turn, and looked at him for a moment without speaking; a certain suspicion looming in her eyes, as if suggested by his perceptible want of ease.

'How like summer it is getting to feel, is it not?' she said.

John admitted that it was getting to feel like summer: and, bending his gaze upon her with an earnestness which no longer left any doubt of his subject, went on to ask--

'Have you ever in these last weeks thought of how it used to be between us?'

She replied quickly, 'O, John, you shouldn't begin that again. I am almost another woman now!'

'Well, that's all the more reason why I should, isn't it?'

Anne looked thoughtfully to the other end of the garden, faintly shaking her head; 'I don't quite see it like that,' she returned.

'You feel yourself quite free, don't you?'

'QUITE free!' she said instantly, and with proud distinctness; her eyes fell, and she repeated more slowly, 'Quite free.' Then her thoughts seemed to fly from herself to him. 'But you are not?'

'I am not?'

'Miss Johnson!'

'O--that woman! You know as well as I that was all make-up, and that I never for a moment thought of her.'

'I had an idea you were acting; but I wasn't sure.'

'Well, that's nothing now. Anne, I want to relieve your life; to cheer you in some way; to make some amends for my brother's bad conduct. If you cannot love me, liking will be well enough. I have thought over every side of it so many times--for months have I been thinking it over--and I am at last sure that I do right to put it to you in this way. That I don't wrong Bob I am quite convinced. As far as he is concerned we be both free. Had I not been sure of that I would never have spoken. Father wants me to take on the mill, and it will please him if you can give me one little hope; it will make the house go on altogether better if you can think o' me.'

'You are generous and good, John,' she said, as a big round tear bowled helter-skelter down her face and hat-strings.

'I am not that; I fear I am quite the opposite,' he said, without looking at her. 'It would be all gain to me-- But you have not answered my question.'

She lifted her eyes. 'John, I cannot!' she said, with a cheerless smile.