--Yours truly,
VIVIETTE CONSTANTINE.'
She was so anxious that he should get this letter the same day that she ran across to the column with it during the morning, preferring to be her own emissary in so curious a case. The door, as she had expected, was locked; and, slipping the letter under it, she went home again. During
lunch her ardour in the cause of Swithin's hurt feelings cooled down,
till she exclaimed to herself, as she sat at her lonely table, 'What
could have possessed me to write in that way!' After lunch she went faster to the tower than she had gone in the early morning, and peeped eagerly into the chink under the door. She could
discern no letter, and, on trying the latch, found that the door would
open. The letter was gone, Swithin having obviously arrived in the
interval.
She blushed a blush which seemed to say, 'I am getting foolishly
interested in this young man.' She had, in short, in her own opinion,
somewhat overstepped the bounds of dignity. Her instincts did not square
well with the formalities of her existence, and she walked home
despondently.
Had a concert, bazaar, lecture, or Dorcas meeting required the patronage
and support of Lady Constantine at this juncture, the circumstance would
probably have been sufficient to divert her mind from Swithin St.
Cleeve and astronomy for some little time. But as none of these incidents were
within the range of expectation--Welland House and parish lying far from
large towns and watering-places--the void in her outer life continued,
and with it the void in her life within.
The youth had not answered her letter; neither had he called upon her in
response to the invitation she had regretted, with the rest of the
epistle, as being somewhat too warmly informal for black and white. To
speak tenderly to him was one thing, to write another--that was her
feeling immediately after the event; but his counter-move of silence and
avoidance, though probably the result of pure unconsciousness on his
part, completely dispersed such self-considerations now. Her eyes never
fell upon the Rings-Hill column without a solicitous wonder arising as to
what he was doing. A true woman, she would assume the remotest
possibility to be the most likely contingency, if the possibility had the
recommendation of being tragical; and she now feared that something was
wrong with Swithin St. Cleeve. Yet there was not the least doubt that he
had become so immersed in the business of the new telescope as to forget
everything else.
On Sunday, between the services, she walked to Little Welland, chiefly
for the sake of giving a run to a house-dog, a large St. Bernard, of whom
she was fond. The distance was but short; and she returned along a
narrow lane, divided from the river by a hedge, through whose leafless
twigs the ripples flashed silver lights into her eyes. Here she
discovered Swithin, leaning over a gate, his eyes bent upon the stream.