_Going round the world with the Hartleys!_ The blow has fallen, then. Peggy had known that it was coming, as surely as she knows the fact of her own existence. She had seen it approaching for months; and yet now that it has come, she stands stunned. 'I suppose that that was what he was talking to her about all evening,' pursues Prue, looking blankly away out of the window, to where, on the top of the apple-tree outside, a couple of jackdaws are sitting swinging in the fresh wind. 'That was what made him forget all about his dances with me. Of course, there would be a great deal to arrange; they are to be away a whole year. It was quite natural, quite; only it showed that it was all over with me. Even I could see that.' She says it quite calmly, and with a sort of smile, her eyes still fixed on the jackdaws. Peggy is still too choked to speak. 'No one would have guessed last night that it was _I_ who was engaged to him, would they?' pursues Prue, bringing home her straying look, and resting it in a half-uncertain appeal upon her sister. 'And yet I was, was not I? It was not my fancy; he did ask me once to be his wife--_his wife_,' dwelling on the word with a long, clinging intonation--'standing there by myself all those hours. I am sure that if he had known how it hurt me he would not have done it; he is too kind-hearted willingly to hurt a fly.' Peggy's only answer is a groan. 'But of course I must write to him,' continues the younger girl, beginning again to draw her half-written sheet of paper tremblingly towards her. 'And--and it is not altogether an easy letter to write; you understand that. It requires all one's attention.' 'Lie down and rest first, and write afterwards,' says Peggy, in a tone of tender persuasion. 'No, no!' returns the other, pushing her sister away. 'I will lie down and rest afterwards; there will be plenty of time. But I could not rest before it was written; and do not disturb me; do not speak to me. I should be sorry if there were anything ridiculous--anything that she could laugh at in my last letter to him.' CHAPTER XXXVI