Margaret Maliphant

								

left Joyce all the entertaining of Miss Hoad to do in the mean time.
For the captain had not paid so much attention to Joyce on that day as
on most others; I suppose he thought it was more discreet not to do so
before strangers.
Both our lady visitors had left, however, by half-past five o'clock,
and Captain Forrester stood on the garden terrace now with Joyce alone,
while I had returned to the darning of the family socks. It was close
upon sunset, and they were looking at the lilacs that were beginning
to swell in the bud. Joyce wore a lilac gown herself, I remember. The
captain had once admired it, and I had noticed that she had put it on
very often since then.
I watched them from the parlor window where I sat with my work. For the
first time I was half frightened at what I had done. I wondered what
this romance was like that I had woven for Joyce. I felt that she was
gliding away out of my ken, into an unknown world where I had driven
her, and where I could not now follow her. Was it all happiness in that
world?
Although the light was fading, and I wanted it all for my work, I moved
away from the window-seat farther into the room. It seemed indelicate
to watch them; although, indeed, they were only standing there side
by side quietly, and what they were saying to one another I could not
have heard if I had wished to do so. But it was my doing that they were
alone at all. Joyce had stockings to darn too, but I had suggested that
the parlor posy wanted freshening, and that there were some primroses
out on the cliff.
Mother was out; she had gone to assist at the arrival of a new
member of the population, and such an event always interested her
so profoundly that she forgot other things for the moment. Such an
opportunity might not occur again for a long time, and I was not going
to miss it--otherwise those two had not been alone together before. At
least not to my knowledge.
Once Joyce had gone out into the village marketing by herself, and when
she had come home she had run straight up into her room instead of
coming into the parlor. I had gone up to her after a little while, as
she did not come down, and had found her sitting by the window with her
things still on, looking out to the sea with a half-troubled expression
on her face. I had asked her what was the matter, and she had smiled
and said, "Nothing at all," and I had believed her.
However, even in the most open way in the world, Captain Forrester had
managed to get pretty well acquainted with Joyce by this time, for he
had come to the Grange almost every day since the squire had brought
him to pay that first call. He came on the plea of interest in father's
views; and though mother, I could see, had taken a dislike to him,
simply because he was a rival to the squire, and took every opportunity
of saying disparaging things about him to us girls when he was not
present, even she felt the influence of the friendly manner that