Effie came down to dinner late—with eyes that betrayed themselves by unusual shining, and a colour that wavered from red to pale. She had put on her white frock hurriedly, forgetting her usual little ornaments in the confusion of her mind. To her astonishment Mrs. Ogilvie, who was waiting at the drawing-room door looking out for her, instead of the word of reproof which her lateness generally called forth, met her with a beaming countenance.

“Well, Miss Effie!” she said, “so you’re too grand to mind that it’s dinner-time. I suppose you’ve just had your little head turned with flattery and nonsense.” And to the consternation of her stepdaughter, Mrs. Ogilvie took her by the shoulders and gave her a hearty kiss upon her cheek. “I am just as glad as if I had come into a fortune,” she said.

Mr. Ogilvie added a “humph!” as he moved on to the dining-room. And he shot a glance which was not an angry glance (as it generally was when he was kept waiting for his dinner) at his child.

“You need not keep the dinner waiting now that she has come,” he said. Effie did not know what to make of this extraordinary kindness of everybody. Even old George did not look daggers at her as he took off the cover of the tureen. It was inconceivable; never in her life had her sin of being late received this kind of notice before.

When they sat down at table Mrs. Ogilvie gave a little shriek of surprise, “Why, where are your beads, Effie? Ye have neither a bow, nor a bracelet, nor one single thing, but your white frock. I might well say your head was turned, but I never expected it in this way. And why did you not keep him to his dinner? You would have minded your ribbons that are so becoming to you, if he had been here.”

“Let her alone,” said Mr. Ogilvie, “she is well enough as she is.”

“Oh yes, she’s well enough, and more than well enough, considering how she has managed her little affairs. Take some of this trout, Effie. It’s a very fine fish. It’s just too good a dinner to eat all by ourselves. I was thinking we were sure to have had company. Why didn’t you bring him in to his dinner, you shy little thing? You would think shame: as if there was any reason to think shame! Poor young man! I will take him into my own hands another time, and I will see he is not snubbed. Give Miss Effie a little of that claret, George. She is just a little done out—what with her walk, and what with——”

“I am not tired at all,” said Effie with indignation. “I don’t want any wine.”

“You are just very cross and thrawn,” said Mrs. Ogilvie, making pretence to threaten the girl with her finger. “You will have your own way. But to be sure there is only one time in the world when a woman is sure of having her own way, and I don’t grudge it to you, my dear. Robert, just you let Rory be in his little chair till nurse comes for him. No, no, I will not have him given things to eat. It’s very bad manners, and it keeps his little stomach out of order. Let him be. You are just making a fool of the bairn.”

“Guide your side of the house as well as I do mine,” said Mr. Ogilvie, aggrieved. He was feeding his little son furtively, with an expression of beatitude impossible to describe. Effie was a young woman in whom it was true he took a certain interest; but her marrying or any other nonsense that she might take into her head, what were they to him? He had never taken much to do with the woman’s side of the house. But his little Rory, that was a different thing. A splendid little fellow, just a little king. And what harm could a little bit of fish, or just a snap of grouse, do him? It was all women’s nonsense thinking that slops and puddings and that kind of thing were best for a boy.

“My side of the house!” said Mrs. Ogilvie, with a little shriek; “and what might that be? If Rory is not my side of the house, whose side does he belong to? And don’t you think that I would ever let you have the guiding of him. Oh, nurse, here you are! I am just thankful to see you; for Mr. Ogilvie will have his own way, and as sure as we’re all living, that boy will have an attack before to-morrow morning. Take him away and give him a little——. Yes, yes, just something simple of that kind. Good-night, my bonnie little man. I would like to know what is my side if it isn’t Rory? You are meaning the female side. Well, and if I had not more consideration for your daughter than you have for my son——”

“Listen to her!” said Mr. Ogilvie, “her son! I like that.”

“And whose son may he be? But you’ll not make me quarrel whatever you do—and on this night of all others. Effie, here is your health, my dear, and I wish you every good. We will have to write to Eric, and perhaps he might get home in time. What was that Eric said, Robert, about getting short leave? It is a very wasteful thing coming all the way from India, and only six weeks or so to spend at home. Still, if there was a good reason for it——”

“Is Eric coming home? have you got a letter? But you could not have got a letter since the morning,” cried Effie.

“No; but other things may have happened since the morning,” said Mrs. Ogilvie with a nod and a smile. Effie could not understand the allusions which rained upon her. She retreated more and more into herself, merely listening to the talk that went on across her. She sat at her usual side of the table, eating little, taking no notice. It did not occur to her that what had happened in the wood concerned any one but herself. After all, what was it? Nothing to disturb anybody, not a thing to be talked about. To try to please her—that was all he had asked, and who could have refused him a boon so simple? It was silly of her even, she said to herself, to be so confused by it, so absorbed thinking about it, growing white and red, as if something had happened; when nothing had happened except that he was to try to please her—as if she were so hard to please!

But Effie was more and more disturbed when her stepmother turned upon her as soon as the dining-room door was closed, and took her by the shoulders again.

“You little bit thing, you little quiet thing!” said Mrs. Ogilvie. “To think you should have got the prize that never took any thought of it, whereas many another nice girl!—I am just as proud as if it was myself: and he is good as well as rich, and by no means ill-looking, and a very pleasant young man. I have always felt like a mother to you, Effie, and always done my duty, I hope. Just you trust in me as if I were your real mother. Where did ye meet him? And were you very much surprised? and what did he say?”

Effie grew red from the soles of her feet, she thought, to the crown of her head, shame or rather shamefacedness, its innocent counterpart, enveloping her like a mantle. Her eyes fell before her stepmother’s, but she shook herself free of Mrs. Ogilvie’s hold.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“Oh fie, Effie, fie! You may not intend to show me any confidence, which will be very ill done on your part: but you cannot pretend not to know what I mean. It was me that had pity upon the lad, and showed him the way you were coming. I have always been your well-wisher, doing whatever I could. And to tell me that you don’t know what I mean!”

Effie had her little obstinacies as well as another. She was not so perfect as Fred Dirom thought. She went and got her knitting,—a little stocking for Rory,—work which she was by no means devoted to on ordinary occasions. But she got it out now, and sat down in a corner at a distance from the table and the light, and began to knit as if her life depended upon it.

“I must get this little stocking finished. It has been so long in hand,” she said.

“Well, that is true,” said Mrs, Ogilvie, who had watched all Effie’s proceedings with a sort of vexed amusement; “very true, and I will not deny it. You have had other things in your mind; still, to take a month to a bit little thing like that, that I could do in two evenings! But you’re very industrious all at once. Will you not come nearer to the light?”

“I can see very well where I am,” said Effie shortly.

“I have no doubt you can see very well where you are, for there is little light wanted for knitting a stocking. Still you would be more sociable if you would come nearer. Effie Ogilvie!” she cried suddenly, “you will never tell me that you have sent him away?”

Effie looked at her with defiance in her eyes, but she made no reply.

“Lord bless us!” said her stepmother; “you will not tell me you have done such a thing? Effie, are you in your senses, girl? Mr. Fred Dirom, the best match in the county, that might just have who he liked,—that has all London to pick and choose from,—and yet comes out of his way to offer himself to a—to a—just a child like you. Robert,” she said, addressing her husband, who was coming in tranquilly for his usual cup of tea, “Robert! grant us patience! I’m beginning to think she has sent Fred Dirom away!”

“Where has she sent him to?” said Mr. Ogilvie with a glance half angry, half contemptuous from under his shaggy eyebrows. Then he added, “But that will never do, for I have given the young man my word.”

Effie had done her best to go on with her knitting, but the needles had gone all wrong in her hands: she had slipped her stitches, her wool had got tangled. She could not see what she was doing. She got up, letting the little stocking drop at her feet, and stood between the two, who were both eyeing her so anxiously.

“I wish,” she said, “that you would let me alone. I am doing nothing to anybody. I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that. What have I done? I have done nothing that is wrong. Oh, I wish—I wish Uncle John was here!” she exclaimed suddenly, and in spite of herself and all her pride and defensive instincts, suddenly began to cry, like the child she still was.

“It would be a very good thing if he were here; he would perhaps bring you to your senses. A young man that you have kept dancing about you all the summer, and let him think you liked his society, and was pleased to see him when he came, and never a thought in your head of turning him from the door. And now when he has spoken to your father, and offered himself and all, in the most honourable way. Dear bless me, Effie, what has the young man done to you that you have led him on like this, and made a fool of him, and then to send him away?”

“I have never led him on,” cried Effie through her tears. “I have not made a fool of him. If he liked to come, that was nothing to anybody, and I never—never——”

“It is very easy to speak. Perhaps you think a young man has no pride? when they are just made up of it! Yes—you have led him on: and now he will be made a fool of before all the county. For everybody has seen it; it will run through the whole countryside; and the poor young man will just be scorned everywhere, that has done no harm but to think more of you than you deserve.”

“There’s far too much of this,” said Mr. Ogilvie, who prided himself a little on his power to stop all female disturbances and to assert his authority. “Janet, you’ll let the girl alone. And, Effie, you’ll see that you don’t set up your face and answer back, for it is a thing I will not allow. Dear me, is that tea not coming? I will have to go away without it if it is not ready. I should have thought, with all the women there are in this house, it might be possible to get a cup of tea.”

“And that is true indeed,” said his wife, “but they will not keep the kettle boiling. The kettle should be always aboil in a well-cared-for house. I tell them so ten times in a day. But here it is at last. You see you are late, George; you have kept your master waiting. And Effie——”

But Effie had disappeared. She had slid out of the room under cover of old George and his tray, and had flown upstairs through the dim passages to her own room, where all was dark. There are moments where the darkness is more congenial than the light, when a young head swims with a hundred thoughts, and life is giddy with its over-fulness, and a dark room is a hermitage and place of refuge soothing in its contrast with all that which is going through the head of the thinker, and all the pictures that float before her (as in the present case—or his) eyes. She had escaped like a bird into its nest: but not without carrying a little further disturbance with her.

The idea of Fred had hitherto conveyed nothing to her mind that was not flattering and soothing and sweet. But now there was a harsher side added to this amiable and tender one. She had led him on. She had given him false hopes and made him believe that she cared for him. Had she made him believe that she—cared for him? Poor Fred! He had himself put it in so much prettier a way. He was to try to please her, as if she had been the Queen. To try to please her! and she on her side was to try—to like him. That was very different from those harsh accusations. There was nothing that was not delightful, easy, soothing in all that. They had parted such friends. And he had called her darling, which no one had ever called her before.

Her heart took refuge with Fred, who was so kind and asked for so little, escaping from her stepmother with her flood of questions and demands, and her father with his dogmatism. His word; he had given his word. Did he think that was to pledge her? that she was to be handed over to any one he pleased, because he had given his word? But Fred made no such claim—he was too kind for that. He was to try to please her; that was different altogether.

And then Effie gradually forgot the episode downstairs, and began to think of the dark trees tossed against the sky, and the road through the wood, and the look of her young lover’s eyes which she had not ventured to meet, and all the things he said which she did not remember. She did not remember the words, and she had not met the look, but yet they were both present with her in her room in the dark, and filled her again with that confused, sweet sense of elevation, that self-pleasure which it would be harsh to call vanity, that bewildered consciousness of worship. It made her head swim and her heart beat. To be loved was so strange and beautiful. Perhaps Fred himself was not so imposing. She had noticed in spite of herself how the wind had blown the tails of his coat and almost forced him on against his will. He was not the hero of whom Effie, like other young maidens, had dreamed. But yet her young being was thrilled and responsive to the magic in the air, and touched beyond measure by that consciousness of being loved.

Fred came next morning eager and wistful and full of suppressed ardour, but with a certain courage of permission and sense that he had a right to her society, which was half irksome and half sweet. He hung about all the morning, ready to follow, to serve her, to get whatever she might want, to read poetry to her, to hold her basket while she cut the flowers—the late flowers of October—to watch while she arranged them, saying a hundred half-articulate things that made her laugh and made her blush, and increased every moment the certainty that she was no longer little Effie whom everybody had ordered about, but a little person of wonderful importance—a lady like the ladies in Shakespeare, one for whom no comparison was too lofty, and no name too sweet.

It amused Effie in the bottom of her heart, and yet it touched her: she could not escape the fascination. And so it came about that without any further question, without going any farther into herself, or perceiving how she was drawn into it, she found herself bound and pledged for life.

Engaged to Fred Dirom! She only realized the force of it when congratulations began to arrive from all the countryside—letters full of admiration and good wishes; and when Doris and Phyllis rushed upon her and took possession of her, saying a hundred confusing things. Effie was frightened, pleased, flattered, all in one. And everybody petted and praised her as if she had done some great thing.