"Go on please," said the curious Mattie.
"Mattie, you remember Mr. Darcy?" she asked, spasmodically.
"Mr. Darcy--no," said the puzzled Mattie.
"The gentleman who--who fell in love with me when I was a child," she explained, very rapidly, and with still greater excitement, "whom I thought I had forgotten, and who had forgotten me, until I met him again."
"Oh! this _is_ wrong!" exclaimed Mattie.
"I know it--I have owned it!" cried Harriet; "let me tell the story out.
I met him, parted coldly from him, met him again, all by accident on my part; met him for a third time at the Eveleighs, with whom he had got on visiting terms; met him day after day, evening after evening there, until the spell was on me which overpowered me, and robbed me of my peace--until I loved him, Mattie!"
"And he knows----"
"He knows nothing, save that I am engaged to be another"s--and that I dare scarcely think of him."
"He knows too much, _I_ know," said Mattie, reflectively; "and he has found a way to turn you against Mr. Sidney. What a wonder he must be!"
"Poor Sidney!"
"And to think it"s all over between you and him," added Mattie--"him who thinks so much of you, and is growing old to my eyes, with the fear upon him which I understand now, and which is now so natural!"
"What fear!"
"Of losing you."
"I am so sorry--_so_ very sorry for him. And I am ashamed to think that I have led him on to build his hopes upon me, and now must dash them down."
"Yes--to-night," said Mattie, thoughtfully.
"Tonight!" exclaimed Harriet, in alarm.
"I don"t know much about these things--I never understood what love for a young man was, having had too much to do," she added, with a little laugh that echoed strangely in that shadowy room, "but it don"t seem quite the thing to keep the two on, or both of them in suspense about you."
"Do you think I would?" asked Harriet, proudly.
"It seems to me that if I were in your place, I should take a pattern from Mr. Sidney, and speak out at once--go straight at it, as he calls it--and tell him everything."
"But----"
Mattie became excited in her turn.
"It isn"t right--it isn"t fair to let a man keep thinking of you, when you"ve turned against him," she cried; "it"s cowardly and base to hide the truth from him, or be afraid of telling it. It won"t kill him, Harriet, for he"s a proud spirit, that will bear up through it all, bitterly as he will feel it for a while."
"I"m not afraid--it is not that," said Harriet; "I only wish to know what you would think the best method of telling him all, and yet sparing him pain. I have been fancying that if _you_ hinted to him at first the truth----"
"_I_ hint!" exclaimed Mattie, "not for the world. I"m only a servant here, and you might as well ask poor Ann Packet to hint the truth as me.
I"m sorry--you will never know how sorry I am--that you two are going to break it off forever; but I should be more sorry still if you let to-night go by, and not try hard to face him."
"Mattie, I will face him," said Harriet, with her lips compressed; "I will tell him all. After all, it was not an engagement, and I was as free as he to make my choice elsewhere if I preferred. I am not in the wrong to tell him that my girlish fancy was a mistake."
"No--only in the wrong to keep the truth back."
"You will not think that I have intentionally attempted to deceive poor Sidney, will you?"
"G.o.d forbid, my dear."
"Vain--frivolous, and weak--anything but cruel. Yes, I will tell him all when he comes back to-night. There is no use in delay."
"Only danger," added Mattie, remembering her copy-book admonition; a copy which Sidney Hinchford had set her himself in the old days, when she was deep in text-hand.
"And then when it is all told, and he knows that I am free, happiness will come again, I suppose. Heigho! I was very happy once."
"Happiness will come again," said Mattie, more cheerfully, "to be sure."
"Mattie, I have been trying very hard to think of Mr. Sidney, first of all; it is that trying which has made me ill. I know he loves me very much, and will never think of anybody else; and it is--it is hard upon him now!"
"You must be very fond of this other one," said Mattie. "Is he handsome?"
"Very."
"And very fond of you, of course?"
"Yes; but it is a struggle to keep his love back--I am cold to him--and I--I will _not_ listen to him, and so drive him to despair. Oh! I am a miserable wretch! I make everybody unhappy whom I meet."
The weak girl burst into tears, and rocked herself to and fro on the chair before the fire. Mattie pa.s.sed her arms round her neck and drew the pretty agitated face to her bosom, soothing it there as though she had been a mother troubled with love-sick daughters of her own.
"It will soon be over now," Mattie said, when Harriet was more composed.
"Try and be calm; think of what you shall say to poor Sidney, while I attend to the shop a bit."
Mattie went into the shop, leaving Harriet Wesden with her chin clutched in both hands, looking dreamily at the fire. She was more composed now the whole truth had escaped her; she felt that she should be happy in time, after Sidney Hinchford had been told all, and that terrible ordeal of telling it had been gone through. One more scene, which had made her shudder to forestall by sober thought, and then the new life, brighter and rosier from that day!
Poor Sidney, what should she say to him, to soften the look which would rise to his dark eyes and transfix her? What was best to say and do, to keep him from thinking ill of her, and despising her for vacillation?
Mattie came in, looking white and scared; but Harriet, possessed by a new thought which had suddenly dashed in upon her, failed to observe the change.
"Mattie, dear," she cried, "if he should think I give him up because he"s poorer than Mr. Darcy--that it is for the sake of money that I turn away from him!"
"Money"s a troublesome thing," said Mattie, s.n.a.t.c.hing up her bonnet from the sideboard, and putting it on her head with trembling hands; "if you take your eyes from it for an instant, it"s gone."
"But, Mr. Darcy----"
"Oh! bother Mr. Darcy," was the half-peevish exclamation. "I have been listening to you, and they"ve robbed the shop again. Everything"s against me just now! Mind the place till I come back, please."
CHAPTER VII.