When Clara had met James Rutherford she was living as companion--that refuge for the penniless woman of her generation--to three ladies who were all at different stages of elderliness and all exacting, but she had not been one of the typical companions of romance; she was not meek and forbearing and tearful, nor of that defiant nature which, in fiction, wins all hearts. She was her sensible and cheerful self; she was sorry for the old ladies, and she enjoyed being kind to them, for she had very strongly that quality of helpfulness which all women are expected to have, and are blamed for not possessing. The old ladies in all their experience had never before had for companion a nice-looking young woman who considered herself their friend, chose their clothes with as much attention as she gave to her own, and had a fund of interesting things to tell them, including the progress of her love affairs.
"Has he made you an offer yet?" one of them said wistfully, with one eye on Clara as a bride, and the other on a lost companion.
"No," Clara answered demurely, hiding the fact that she had not so much as spoken to the dark-faced young man whom she sometimes met in her walks, and whom in a dull hour she had once described with such vivacity and feeling that her hearers were sure she had lost her heart to him; consequently, that the young man must at least have hinted at his devotion, or she could hardly have condescended to love him.
"You mustn't give up hope, my dear. There may be reasons."
"There are," Clara said darkly, and left her old friend in a flutter.
"There are reasons," she told her sisters. "It will all come right in the end."
Clara noticed, with some amusement, that her meetings with the tall young man were growing more and more frequent. When she set out on her morning errands he would often chance to pass the gate, and she came to look for his long figure on her walks, even to think that day unprofitable on which she did not see him. At length he sat opposite to her at church, gazing at her with unhappy eyes throughout the service, and after that she ceased to talk about him, and the old ladies, thinking she suffered, gave her unexpected little presents of sweetmeats or knitted cuffs.