‘Well?’ said Mrs. Hayward, somewhat sharply, as she followed her husband upstairs.
‘Well, my dear! everything is quite right and sweet and true about her, as I always thought it was.’
‘I daresay. That is all very charming, Henry, and I am delighted that you are so much pleased. But what about Captain Bellendean?’
‘Oh!—about Captain Bellendean,’ said the Colonel, rubbing his hands with an attempt to look quite at his ease and comfortable. Then he added still cheerfully, but with a sinking of his heart, ‘Do you know, I don’t think there was anything quite definitely said between us about Norman Bellendean.’
‘Oh, there was nothing definitely said!’
‘Not by name, you know,’ said Colonel Hayward, with a propitiatory smile, still softly rubbing his hands.
‘And what did you talk of definitely, may I ask? You’ve been a long time out. I suppose something came of it,’ said Mrs. Hayward more sharply than ever.
‘Oh yes, certainly,’ said the Colonel, very conciliatory. ‘Joyce desired nothing better than to give me her full confidence, Elizabeth. She has a heart of gold, my dear. She said at once that she knew I would never misunderstand her—that I would always help her; and nothing could be more true. I think I may say we understand each other perfectly now.’
Elizabeth’s keen eye saw through all this confidence and plausible certainty. ‘What did she tell you then—about last night?’ she said.
‘About last night? Well, my dear, I told you we did not go into things very definitely—we did not put all the dots on the i’s. It was rather what you might call—general. No names, you know,’ he repeated, looking at her with a still more ingratiating smile.
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‘No names, I know! In short, Henry, you are no wiser than when you went out,’ Mrs. Hayward said, with an exasperation that was not unnatural. ‘I knew how it would be,’ she added. ‘She has just thrown dust in your eyes, and made you believe whatever she pleased. I never expected anything else, for my part.’
‘Indeed, my dear, you are quite mistaken. She said to me in the most trusting way that she had the fullest confidence—— My dear Elizabeth, I don’t think you do justice to Joyce.’
‘Oh, justice!’ she cried: perhaps she did well to be angry. ‘I must trust, then, to myself,’ she said, ‘as I generally have to do.’
‘But Elizabeth—Elizabeth!’
‘Oh, don’t bother me, please!’ the angry woman said.
Joyce went up stairs to take off her hat, and as she did so her eyes fell upon certain little closed cases upon her table. One of them was that photograph of old Janet Matheson in her big shawl and black satin bonnet, with Peter, a wide laugh of self-ridicule yet pleasure on his face, looking over her shoulder. It was from no scorn of those poor old people that the little case was closed. Mrs. Hayward’s maid had made some silly remark about ‘an old washerwoman,’ and Joyce, almost with tears of anger, had shut it from all foolish eyes. She took it up and opened it now, and kissed it with quivering lips—wondering would granny understand her? or would she be so overjoyed, so uplifted, by the thought of the Captain, that everything else would be dim to her. Joyce put down the little homely picture, but in so doing touched another, which lay closed, too, beside it. She did not open that case—she recoiled with a low cry. The outside was enough—it filled her with a sudden repugnance, a kind of horror. She moved even from the side of the table where it was. She thought she saw him standing there looking at her, in the attitude in which he had stood for his portrait; and she remembered, nay, saw with a clearness beyond that of mere vision, his look as he had presented her with this memorial of himself. ‘It is said to be very like,’ he had said; ‘I am no judge.’ She remembered the ineffable little tone in which he had said it—a tone which even then filled her with something between ridicule and shame.
And now—oh, how could Joyce think of it! how could she look back upon that time! Now it was odious to her to recall him at all, to see him spring up and put himself into his attitude—so gentlemanly, as his mother said. Joyce grew crimson, a scorching flush came all over her. She shrank away from the
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 wretched little photograph as if it had been a serpent, and could sting her. She had never liked it. It had always seemed an uncomfortable revelation, fixing him there in black and white, much worse even than he was: even! Joyce hid her face in her hands, in an agony of self-horror and shame. Oh, how mean, dishonourable, vulgar, she was! He had been better than all the lads about, who would have thrust their awkward love upon her in the old days. An educated man, able to talk about poetry and beautiful things. She had been honoured by his regard—it had been a great thing for her to be engaged to such a man—and now! There was nothing, nothing which could excuse the baseness of her desertion of him. What could she say for herself? There was only one thing she could say, and that was what no one would understand. The one thing was, that she had not known what love was, and now love had come. Ah! if it had been love for some one poorer, less desirable than Andrew, her plea might have been believed. But love for Norman Bellendean—love that would put her in the place which was as good as a queen’s to all the country-side—love by which she would better herself beyond conception.
Joyce felt a chill come to her heart after that hot rush of shame—how was she to say it, how accept it even in her own heart? Even granny would be ashamed—granny who had prophesied that he would be the first to be cast off—but without thinking that it would be Joyce—Joyce herself, not any proud father—who would cast off the poor schoolmaster. Joyce’s honest peasant breeding, with its contempt for the parvenu, gave her a keener horror and shame than would have been possible, perhaps, to any other class. She felt humiliated to the very dust, angry with herself, disgusted at her own treachery. What should she do?—how represent it to those keen cottage critics, who would look at her behaviour with such sharp eyes? To give up Andrew Halliday for the Captain,—the meanest woman might do that—the one that was most ignoble. And who was to know, who was to understand, that it was true love, the first love she had ever known, and not pride or advantage that, before she knew it, had snatched Joyce’s heart away?
She was not sufficiently composed to allow herself to think that she had never shown to her rustic suitor any more preference than was natural to the fact that he was more congenial to her than the ploughman. She had accepted sedately his attentions. She had consented vaguely to that half proprietorship which he had claimed in her; but there had been little wooing between them, and Joyce had put aside all those demonstrations of affection which Andrew had attempted. But she said to herself none of these things.
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 She even did not say that it was a mistake, for which in her youthfulness and ignorance she was scarcely to blame. She took it very seriously, as a sin which she had committed, but meaning no harm, meaning no harm, as she repeated to herself, with tears in her eyes. For the other had come upon her like a flood, like a fire, like some natural accident of which there was no warning. All had been tranquillity in her heart one moment—and in the next she knew that she was a traitor, forsworn. There had been no warning. She had not known of any danger—but in a moment she had discovered that she was a false woman, false and forsworn.
She went down to the luncheon-table after a long interval—long enough to make her late for that meal, which was a fault Mrs. Hayward did not approve. But Joyce had to bathe her hot eyes which could not shed any tears, but burnt in their sockets like fiery coals, she thought, and then to wait till the glaze and flush produced by the bathing had worn off. It had not altogether worn off when she came downstairs, but remained in a suspicious glow, so that she seemed to have been crying, though she had not been able to afford herself that relief. The Colonel cried, ‘Why, Joyce!’ when she appeared, and was about to make some further remark, when a look ............