From that day forth it was understood at Upcombe that Dolly Barton
was informally engaged to Walter Brydges. Their betrothal would be
announced in the "Morning Post"--"We learn that a marriage has been
arranged," and so forth--as soon as the chosen bride had returned
to town, and communicated the great news in person to her mother.
For reasons of her own, Dolly preferred this delay; she didn't wish
to write on the subject to Herminia. Would mamma go and spoil it
all? she wondered. It would be just like her.
The remaining week of her stay at the rectory was a golden dream of
delight to Dolly. Beyond even the natural ecstasy of first love,
the natural triumph of a brilliant engagement, what visions of
untold splendor danced hourly, day and night, before her dazzled
eyes! What masques of magnificence! county balls, garden parties!
It was heaven to Dolly. She was going to be grander than her
grandest daydream.
Walter took her across one afternoon to Combe Mary, and introduced
her in due form to his mother and his step-father, who found the
pink-and-white girl "so very young," but saw no other grave fault
in her. He even escorted her over the ancestral home of the
masters of Combe Mary, in which they were both to live, and which
the young squire had left vacant of set purpose till he found a
wife to his mind to fill it. 'Twas the ideal crystallized. Rooks
cawed from the high elms; ivy clambered to the gables; the tower of
the village church closed the vista through the avenue. The cup of
Dolly's happiness was full to the brim. She was to dwell in a
manor-house with livery servants of her own, and to dress for
dinner every night of her existence.
On the very last evening of her stay in Dorsetshire, Walter came
round to see her. Mrs. Compson and the girls managed to keep
discreetly out of the young people's way; the rector was in his
study preparing his Sunday sermon, which arduous intellectual
effort was supposed to engage his close attention for five hours or
so weekly. Not a mouse interrupted. So Dolly and her lover had
the field to themselves from eight to ten in the rectory drawing-room.
From the first moment of Walter's entry, Dolly was dimly aware,
womanlike, of something amiss, something altered in his manner.
Not, indeed, that her lover was less affectionate or less tender
than usual,--if anything he seemed rather more so; but his talk was
embarrassed, pre-occupied, spasmodic. He spoke by fits and starts,
and seemed to hold back something. Dolly taxed him with it at
last. Walter tried to put it off upon her approaching departure.
But he was an honest young man, and so bad an actor that Dolly,
with her keen feminine intuitions, at once detected him. "It's
more than that," she said, all regret, leaning forward with a
quick-gathering moisture in her eye, for she really loved him.
"It's more than that, Walter. You've heard something somewhere
that you don't want to tell me."