"The best way to find that out is to open it," says Margaret, with abominable briskness. "Shall I cut these pretty ribbons, or will you?"
"No, _don"t_ cut them," says t.i.ta quickly.
She draws the basket towards her, and slowly and with care unties the true lover"s knot of pale blue ribbon that fastens it.
"Flowers, I expect," says Margaret.
"But tied up like this?"
"That is because there is a letter inside it."
"You seem to know all about it," says t.i.ta, at which Margaret grows a little red, and wishes, like the parrot, that she had not spoken.
"Yes; it is flowers," says t.i.ta.
"Such flowers!" cries Margaret. And, indeed, it is a rare basketful of Nature"s sweetest gifts that lies before them. Delicate reds, and waxen whites, and the tender greens of the waving fern. "How beautiful!" exclaims Margaret.
t.i.ta has said nothing. But now she puts out her hand.
"What is that?" says she.
"Why, the letter," says Margaret, forgetting her late discomfiture in the excitement of this new discovery.
t.i.ta draws it forth reluctantly. It is tied to a little plant--a tiny plant of pale forget-me-not.
"What can he have to write about?" says she. "Perhaps it is to say he is not coming to-day; let us hope so. But what does this plant mean?"
She opens the envelope with disdainful fingers. It does not, however, contain a letter, after all. It is only a verse scribbled on a card:
"If you will touch, and take, and pardon, What I can give; Take this, a flower, into your garden, And bid it live."
Neither of them speaks for a moment.
"It is a pretty message," says Margaret at last.
"Yes."
t.i.ta"s face is turned aside. Her hand is still resting on the table, the verse and the little plant within it.
"He will be coming soon," says Margaret again.
"Yes, I know."
"You will be kind to him, dearest?"
"That--I _don"t_ know."
"Oh! I _think_ you do," says Margaret; "I think you must see that he----"
"Let me think it out, Meg," says t.i.ta, turning a very pale face to hers. "When he comes tell him I am in the small drawing-room."
She kisses Margaret and leaves the room. The basket of flowers, too, she has left behind her. But Margaret can see that she has taken with her the tiny plant of forget-me-not.
He comes quickly towards her, holding out his hand.
"Margaret said I should find you here," says he. Hope, mingled with great fear, is in his glance. He holds the hand she gives him. "Have you kept your promise?" he asks her. "Have you thought of it?"
"I am tired of thinking," says she, with a long sigh.
"And your decision?"
"Oh! it shall be as you wish," cries she, dragging her hand out of his, and walking backwards from him till she reaches the wall, where she stays, leaning against it as if glad of its support, and glancing at him from under her long lashes. "You shall have your own way. You have always had it. You will have it to the end, I suppose."
"You consent, then!" exclaims her.
"Ah! That is all you think of. To save appearances! You"--her breath coming quickly--"you care nothing for what _I_ am feeling----"
"Don"t wrong me like that," says Rylton, interrupting her. "If you could read my heart you would know that it is of you alone I think.
For you I have thought out everything. You shall be your own mistress---- I shall not interfere with you in any way. I ask you to be my wife, so far as entertaining our guests goes, and the arranging of the household, and that---- No more! You shall be free as air. Do you think that I do not know I have sinned towards you?"
He breaks off in some agitation, and then goes on. "I tell you I shall not for one moment even question a wish of yours."
"I should not like that," says t.i.ta sadly. "That would keep me as I was: always an outsider; a stranger; a guest in my own house."
Rylton walks to the window and back again. A stranger! _Had_ she felt like a stranger in her own house? It hurts him terribly.
"It was I who should have been the stranger," says he. "It was all yours--and yet--did I really make you so unhappy?"
There is something so cruel in his own condemnation of himself that t.i.ta"s heart melts.
"It is all over," says she. "It is at an end. If"--with a sad, strange little glance at him--"we must come together again, let us not begin the new life with recriminations. Perhaps I have been hard to you--Margaret says I have--and if so----" Tears rise in her eyes and choke her utterance. She turns aside from him, and drums with her fingers on the table near her. "I thought those flowers so pretty," says she.
"I didn"t know what to send," returns he, in a voice as low as her own.
"I liked them."
"Did you?" He looks at her. "And yet you are not wearing one of them--not even a bud. I said to myself, when I was coming here, that if you wore one I should take hope from it."
"Flowers die," says she, with her eyes upon the ground.
"Cut flowers. But I sent you a little plant."
"Forget-me-not would not live in town."