'I lull a fancy, trouble-tost.'
Miss Swancourt, it is eleven o'clock.'
She was looking out of her dressing-room window on the first floor, and Knight was regarding her from the terrace balustrade, upon which he had been idly sitting for some time—dividing the glances of his eye between the pages of a book in his hand, the brilliant hues of the geraniums and calceolarias, and the open window above-mentioned.
'Yes, it is, I know. I am coming.'
He drew closer, and under the window.
'How are you this morning, Elfride? You look no better for your long night's rest.'
She appeared at the door shortly after, took his offered arm, and together they walked slowly down the gravel path leading to the river and away under the trees.
Her resolution, sustained during the last fifteen hours, had been to tell the whole truth, and now the moment had come.
Step by step they advanced, and still she did not speak. They were nearly at the end of the walk, when Knight broke the silence.
'Well, what is the confession, Elfride?'
She paused a moment, drew a long breath; and this is what she said:
'I told you one day—or rather I gave you to understand—what was not true. I fancy you thought me to mean I was nineteen my next birthday, but it was my last I was nineteen.'
The moment had been too much for her. Now that the crisis had come, no qualms of conscience, no love of honesty, no yearning to make a confidence and obtain forgiveness with a kiss, could string Elfride up to the venture. Her dread lest he should be unforgiving was heightened by the thought of yesterday's artifice, which might possibly add disgust to his disappointment. The certainty of one more day's affection, which she gained by silence, outvalued the hope of a perpetuity combined with the risk of all.
The trepidation caused by these thoughts on what she had intended to say shook so naturally the words she did say, that Knight never for a moment suspected them to be a last moment's substitution. He smiled and pressed her hand warmly.
'My dear Elfie—yes, you are now—no protestation—what a winning little woman you are, to be so absurdly scrupulous about a mere iota! Really, I never once have thought whether your nineteenth year was the last or the present. And, by George, well I may not; for it would never do for a staid fogey a dozen years older to stand upon such a trifle as that.'
'Don't praise me—don't praise me! Though I prize it from your lips, I don't deserve it now.'
But Knight, being in an exceptionally genial mood, merely saw this distressful exclamation as modesty. 'Well,' he added, after a minute, 'I like you all the better, you know, for such moral precision, although I called it absurd.' He went on with tender earnestness: 'For, Elfride, there is one thing I do love to see in a woman—that is, a soul truthful and clear as heaven's light. I could put up with anything if I had that—forgive nothing if I had it not. Elfride, you have such a soul, if ever woman had; and having it, retain it, and don't ever listen to the fashionable theories of the day about a woman's privileges and natural right to practise wiles. Depend upon it, my dear girl, that a noble woman must be as honest as a noble man. I specially mean by honesty, fairness not only in matters of business and social detail, but in all the delicate dealings of love, to which the licence given to your sex particularly refers.'
Elfride looked troublously at the trees.
'Now let us go on to the river, Elfie.'
'I would if I had a hat on,' she said with a sort of suppressed woe.
YOU ARE READING
A Pair of Blue Eyes (Completed)
General Fiction"A Pair of Blue Eyes" is the third novel by Thomas Hardy, and the first to be published in his own name. First published in 1873, the book tells the story of a love triangle between a young woman and her two suitors from very different backgrounds...
