Part 26 (2/2)

Eleanor forces a smile. She was watching for the post.

The moment the man's tread is heard on the gravel she starts up and runs to the door, dreading every day that Giddy may divulge her address.

She longs to write to Carol Quinton, but dare not. She knows she is too weak to run the risk.

There are two letters for her, one from Philip, the other from Mrs.

Mounteagle.

She reads Giddy's first.

It is amusing and frivolous as usual. The last half, however, amazes Eleanor.

”I am going to be married,” it says in the middle of a description of a new bonnet. ”My future husband is a wealthy man and a general.

Congratulate me! It will not be a long engagement, as he is seventy-five to-morrow, but loves with the ardour of a seventeen year old! Talking of boys, I am asking Bertie to be best man. By this you will see all arrangements for the ceremony are being left entirely to my management.

It will be costly and elaborate. My gown alone would have swallowed up dear Bertie's income. I have given him a splendid new watch to console him, as his was s.n.a.t.c.hed last year at Epsom. I met my General at Lady MacDonald's. He moves in a very good set--gout permitting. Excuse my humour.--Your elated and strong-minded GIDDY.

”P.S.--Don't you think I am a n.o.ble woman? He is one eye short, which is rather a recommendation, but _has_ been one of the handsomest men about town.”

”How strange,” thinks Eleanor. Then she throws the letter aside in disgust. ”And very loathsome!” she adds, tearing open Philip's envelope.

She reads it slowly at the breakfast table.

”Philip is coming this evening,” she says.

Mr. and Mrs. Grebby clap their hands.

”Well, now, I'm right glad,” they exclaim together. ”We could see 'ow you missed 'im, dearie.”

Eleanor feels uncomfortably guilty. What _if_ they knew that her every thought was wandering to another!

Already she has begun to try and piece the photograph together again, regretting her hasty action in the railway carriage. Before reaching Copthorne she had hidden the fragments safely in a corner of her dressing-bag. She hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry that Philip is coming. It will break the dull monotony of the day. At any rate she will get herself up to look as much like the old Eleanor as possible, though the thought of wandering with him through the haunts of past days is distasteful.

She knows it will please him, however; so, crus.h.i.+ng her own feelings, she dons an old dress made by the village dressmaker, one which has hung in her wardrobe ever since she left home, then proceeds to search for the long disused sun bonnet.

The day is almost bright enough to excuse the picturesque headgear, eventually unearthed from the bottom of a tin trunk, and ironed by Eleanor's own hands.

She feels as if she were dressed up for amateur theatricals, and even denies herself the fas.h.i.+onable manner in which her hair is now arranged, going back to the simple style before she knew London or Giddy Mounteagle.

”It certainly _is_ becoming,” she says; ”beauty unadorned,” viewing her charms in this rustic guise before a cracked mirror. ”Yet I wonder what the Richmond girls would think of me if I walked on the Terrace, Sunday morning after church, dressed like this?”

She looks so pretty that her heart sinks at the thought that it is Philip, not Carol, for whom she has prepared.

As she comes down the stairs Mrs. Grebby meets her pale and trembling.

”What is the matter, mammy?” asks Eleanor, seeing that her mother is trying to gain breath for speech.

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