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But to Ann Eliza and her sister there was nothing surprising in his abrupt retreat. The long-drawn agonies of preparing to leave, and the subsequent dumb plunge through the door, were so usual in their circle that they would have been as much embarrassed as Mr. Ramy if he had tried to put any fluency into his adieux.
Loomis, true to his word, wrote a few days later that he had enquired in vain in the work-shop for any news of Ramy; and as she folded this letter and laid it between the leaves of her Bible, Ann Eliza felt that her last hope was gone.
It was made a great while ago by our grandmother." "It looks fine," said Mr. Ramy bowing, and Ann Eliza filled the glasses. In her own and Evelina's she poured only a few drops, but she filled their guest's to the brim. "My sister and I seldom take wine," she explained. With another bow, which included both his hostesses, Mr. Ramy drank off the cherry brandy and pronounced it excellent.
Miss Mellins presently appeared in a glitter of jet sequins and spangles, with a tale of having seen a strange man prowling under her windows till he was called off at dawn by a confederate's whistle; and shortly afterward came Mr. Ramy, his hair brushed with more than usual care, his broad hands encased in gloves of olive-green kid.
It was long since Ann Eliza had seen her in so uncommunicative a mood. The following Saturday Ann Eliza was sitting alone in the shop when the door opened and Mr. Ramy entered. He had never before called at that hour, and she wondered a little anxiously what had brought him. "Has anything happened?" she asked, pushing aside the basketful of buttons she had been sorting.
Dat's the truth." A woman passing along the street paused to look at the shop-window, and Ann Eliza half hoped she would come in; but after a desultory inspection she went on. "Maybe you don't fancy me?" Mr. Ramy suggested, discountenanced by Ann Eliza's silence. A word of assent was on her tongue, but her lips refused it. She must find some other way of telling him. "I don't say that."
Even to her simple judgment the vanity of her hopes was plain, and in the clear light that disappointment turns upon our actions she wondered how she could have been foolish enough to suppose that, even if Mr. Ramy DID go to that particular market, he would hit on the same day and hour as herself. There followed a colourless week unmarked by farther incident.
Ramy, his face hidden in his hands, sitting behind the counter in an attitude of strange dejection. At the click of the latch he looked up slowly, fixing a lustreless stare on Ann Eliza. For a moment she thought he did not know her. "Oh, you're sick!" she exclaimed; and the sound of her voice seemed to recall his wandering senses.
Ramy had proposed to Evelina in the wood, and she was silently preparing herself to receive her sister's confidence that evening. But Evelina was apparently in no mood for confidences. When they reached home she put her faded ferns in water, and after supper, when she had laid aside her silk dress and the forget-me-not bonnet, she remained silently seated in her rocking-chair near the open window.
It struck her as dull, and even slightly absurd, of Evelina not to know at last that they were equals. Mr. Ramy, after a decent interval, returned to the shop; and Ann Eliza, when they met, was unable to detect whether the emotions which seethed under her black alpaca found an echo in his bosom. Outwardly he made no sign.
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