FOUR days had passed since the night of the ball.
Although it was no later in the year than the month of February, the sun was shining brightly, and the air was as soft as the air of a day in spring. Percy and Charlotte were walking together in the little garden at the back of Mr. Bowmore’s cottage, near the town of Dartford, in Kent.
“Mr. Linwood,” said the young lady, “you were to have paid us your first visit the day after the ball. Why have you kept us waiting? Have you been too busy to remember your new friends?”
“I have counted the hours since we parted, Miss Charlotte. If I had not been detained by business—”
“I understand! For three days business has controlled you. On the fourth day, you have controlled business—and here you are? I don’t believe one word of it, Mr. Linwood!”
There was no answering such a declaration as this. Guiltily conscious that Charlotte was right in refusing to accept his well-worn excuse, Percy made an awkward attempt to change the topic of conversation.
They happened, at the moment, to be standing near a small conservatory at the end of the garden. The glass door was closed, and the few plants and shrubs inside had a lonely, neglected look. “Does nobody ever visit this secluded place?” Percy asked, jocosely, “or does it hide discoveries in the rearing of plants which are forbidden mysteries to a stranger?”
“Satisfy your curiosity, Mr. Linwood, by all means,” Charlotte answered in the same tone. “Open the door, and I will follow you.”
Percy obeyed. In passing through the doorway, he encountered the bare hanging branches of some creeping plant, long since dead, and detached from its fastenings on the woodwork of the roof. He pushed aside the branches so that Charlotte could easily follow him in, without being aware that his own forced passage through them had a little deranged the folds of spotless white cambric which a well-dressed gentleman wore round his neck in those days. Charlotte seated herself, and directed Percy’s attention to the desolate conservatory with a saucy smile.
“The mystery which your lively imagination has associated with this place,” she said, “means, being interpreted, that we are too poor to keep a gardener. Make the best of your disappointment, Mr. Linwood, and sit here by me. We are out of hearing and out of sight of mamma’s other visitors. You have no excuse now for not telling me what has really kept you away from us.”
She fixed her eyes on him as she said those words. Before Percy could think of another excuse, her quick observation detected the disordered condition of his cravat, and discovered the upper edge of a black plaster attached to one side of his neck.
“You have been hurt in the neck!” she said. “That is why you have kept away from us for the last three days!”
“A mere trifle,” he answered, in great confusion; “please don’t notice it.”
Her eyes, still resting on his face, assumed an expression of suspicious inquiry, which Percy was entirely at a loss to understand. Suddenly, she started to her feet, as if a new idea had occurred to her. “Wait here,” she said, flushing with excitement, “till I come back: I insist on it!”
Before Percy could ask for an explanation she had left the conservatory.
In a minute or two, Miss Bowmore returned, with a newspaper in her hand. “Read that,” she said, pointing to a paragraph distinguished by a line drawn round it in ink.
The passage that she indicated contained an account of a duel which had recently taken place in the neighborhood of London. The names of the duelists were not mentioned. One was described as an officer, and the other as a civilian. They had quarreled at cards, and had fought with pistols. The civilian had had a narrow escape of his life. His antagonist’s bullet had passed near enough to the side of his neck to tear the flesh, and had missed the vital parts, literally, by a hair’s-breadth.
Charlotte’s eyes, riveted on Percy, detected a sudden change of color in his face the moment he looked at the newspaper. That was enough for her. “You are the man!” she cried. “Oh, for shame, for shame! To risk your life for a paltry dispute about cards!”
“I would risk it again,” said Percy, “to hear you speak as if you set some value on it.”
She looked away from him without a word of reply. Her mind seemed to be busy again with its own thoughts. Did she meditate returning to the subject of the duel? Was she not satisfied with the discovery which she had just made?
No such doubts as these troubled the mind of Percy Linwood. Intoxicated by the charm of her presence, emboldened by her innocent betrayal of the interest that she felt in him, he opened his whole heart to her as unreservedly as if they had known each other from the days of their childhood. There was but one excuse for him. Charlotte was his first love.
“You don’t know how completely you have become a part of my life, since we met at the ball,” he went on. “That one delightful dance seemed, by some magic which I can’t explain, to draw us together in a few minutes as if we had known each other for years. Oh, dear! I could make such a confession of what I felt—only I am afraid of offending you by speaking too soon. Women are so dreadfully difficult to understand. How is a man to know at what time it is considerate toward them to conceal his true feelings; and at what time it is equally considerate to express his true feelings? One doesn’t know whether it is a matter of days or weeks or months—there ought to be a law to settle it. Dear Miss Charlotte, when a poor fellow loves you at first sight, as he has never loved any other woman, and when he is tormented by the fear that some other man may be preferred to him, can’t you forgive him if he lets out the truth a little too soon?” He ventured, as he put that very downright question, to take her hand. “It really isn’t my fault,” he said, simply. “My heart is so full of you I can talk of nothing else.”
To Percy’s delight, the first experimental pressure of his hand, far from being resented, was softly returned. Charlotte looked at him again, with a new resolution in her face.
“I’ll forgive............