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'You didn't show it to me, said her mother. 'No I tore it up. 'Why? 'It was not necessary to keep it, so I destroyed it. Mrs. Pierston did not press her further on the subject, and Avice showed no disposition to continue it.
The person he appeared was too grievously far, chronologically, in advance of the person he felt himself to be. Pierston did not care to regard the figure confronting him so mockingly. Its voice seemed to say 'There's tragedy hanging on to this! But the question of age being pertinent he could not give the spectre up, and ultimately got out of bed under the weird fascination of the reflection.
When Pierston got to his floor again he found that the cellar door was open; some bottles were standing empty that had been full, and many abstracted altogether. All other articles in the house, however, appeared to be intact. His letter to his housekeeper lay in the box as the postman had left it.
He looked up at her. To his surprise, her mind, too, was on other things bent than on the pictures. Her eyes were glancing away to distant people, she was apparently considering the effect she was producing upon them by this cosy tete-a-tete with Pierston, and upon one in particular, a man of thirty, of military appearance, whom Pierston did not know.
'My mother's, and my grandmother's, said she, looking at him no longer as at a possible husband, but as a strange fossilized relic in human form. Pierston saw it, but meaning to give up the game he did not care to spare himself. 'Your mother's and your grandmother's young man, he repeated.
The exact moment of her complete withdrawal Pierston knew not, but not many lines of her were longer discernible in Marcia's remembered contours, nor many sounds of her in Marcia's recalled accents. Their acquaintance, though so fervid, had been too brief for such lingering. There came a time when he learnt, through a trustworthy channel, two pieces of news affecting himself.
She had declared overnight that she did not require any one to sit up with her, but she now rang a little handbell, and in a few minutes a nurse appeared; Ruth Stockwool, an island woman and neighbour, whom Mrs. Pierston knew well, and who knew all Mrs. Pierston's history. 'I am so nervous that I can't stay by myself, said the widow.
He might forgive me marrying into any other family without his knowledge, but he thinks yours such a mean one, and so resents the trade rivalry, that he would never pardon till the day of his death my becoming a Pierston secretly. I didn't see it at first. This remark caused an unpleasant jar on the mind of Pierston.
Still, I might have got to love you in time, if 'Well, then, try, he said warmly. 'Your mother did! No sooner had the words slipped out than Pierston would have recalled them. He had felt in a moment that they jeopardized his cause. 'Mother loved you? said Avice, incredulously gazing at him. 'Yes, he murmured. 'You were not her false young man, surely? That one who 'Yes, yes!
She opened them one by one, till on reading the last, she exclaimed, 'Good gracious! and burst into laughter. 'What is it? asked Pierston. Marcia began to read the letter aloud. It came from a faithful lover of hers, a youthful Jersey gentleman, who stated that he was soon going to start for England to claim his darling, according to her plighted word. She was half risible, half concerned.
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