PAGE 10
Mr. Bilson’s Housekeeper
by
“I did you a great injustice,” he said, with a smile.
“I don’t understand you,” she replied a little coldly.
“Why, this woman and her marriage,” he said; “you must have known something of it all the time, and perhaps helped it along to save Chris.”
“You are mistaken,” returned Miss Trotter truthfully. “I knew nothing of Mr. Bilson’s intentions.”
“Then I have wronged you still more,” he said briskly, “for I thought at first that you were inclined to help Chris in his foolishness. Now I see it was your persuasions that changed him.”
“Let me tell you once for all, Mr. Calton,” she returned with an impulsive heat which she regretted, “that I did not interfere in any way with your brother’s suit. He spoke to me of it, and I promised to see Frida, but he afterwards asked me not to. I know nothing of the matter.”
“Well,” laughed Mr. Calton, “WHATEVER you did, it was most efficacious, and you did it so graciously and tactfully that it has not altered his high opinion of you, if, indeed, he hasn’t really transferred his affections to you.”
Luckily Miss Trotter had her face turned from him at the beginning of the sentence, or he would have noticed the quick flush that suddenly came to her cheek and eyes. Yet for an instant this calm, collected woman trembled, not at what Mr. Calton might have noticed, but at what SHE had noticed in HERSELF. Mr. Calton, construing her silence and averted head into some resentment of his familiar speech, continued hurriedly:–
“I mean, don’t you see, that I believe no other woman could have influenced my brother as you have.”
“You mean, I think, that he has taken his broken heart very lightly,” said Miss Trotter, with a bitter little laugh, so unlike herself that Mr. Calton was quite concerned at it.
“No,” he said gravely. “I can’t say THAT! He’s regularly cut up, you know! And changed; you’d hardly know him. More like a gloomy crank than the easy fool he used to be,” he went on, with brotherly directness. “It wouldn’t be a bad thing, you know, if you could manage to see him, Miss Trotter! In fact, as he’s off his feed, and has some trouble with his arm again, owing to all this, I reckon, I’ve been thinking of advising him to come up to the hotel once more till he’s better. So long as SHE’S gone it would be all right, you know!”
By this time Miss Trotter was herself again. She reasoned, or thought she did, that this was a question of the business of the hotel, and it was clearly her duty to assent to Chris’s coming. The strange yet pleasurable timidity which possessed her at the thought she ignored completely.
He came the next day. Luckily, she was so much shocked by the change in his appearance that it left no room for any other embarrassment in the meeting. His face had lost its fresh color and round outline; the lines of his mouth were drawn with pain and accented by his drooping mustache; his eyes, which had sought hers with a singular seriousness, no longer wore the look of sympathetic appeal which had once so exasperated her, but were filled with an older experience. Indeed, he seemed to have approximated so near to her own age that, by one of those paradoxes of the emotions, she felt herself much younger, and in smile and eye showed it; at which he colored faintly. But she kept her sympathy and inquiries limited to his physical health, and made no allusion to his past experiences; indeed, ignoring any connection between the two. He had been shockingly careless in his convalescence, had had a relapse in consequence, and deserved a good scolding! His relapse was a reflection upon the efficacy of the hotel as a perfect cure! She should treat him more severely now, and allow him no indulgences! I do not know that Miss Trotter intended anything covert, but their eyes met and he colored again. Ignoring this also, and promising to look after him occasionally, she quietly withdrew.