I sometimes think you would rather have me die than have your equatorial
stolen. Confess that your admiration for me was based on my house and
position in the county! Now I am shorn of all that glory, such as it
was, and am a widow, and am poorer than my tenants, and can no longer buy
telescopes, and am unable, from the narrowness of my circumstances, to
mix in circles that people formerly said I adorned, I fear I have lost
the little hold I once had over you.' 'You are as unjust now as you have been generous hitherto,' said St. Cleeve, with tears in his eyes at the gentle banter of the lady, which
he, poor innocent, read as her real opinions. Seizing her hand he
continued, in tones between reproach and anger, 'I swear to you that I
have but two devotions, two thoughts, two hopes, and two blessings in
this world, and that one of them is yourself!' 'And the other?' 'The pursuit of astronomy.' 'And astronomy stands first.' 'I have never ordinated two such dissimilar ideas. And why should you
deplore your altered circumstances, my dear lady? Your widowhood, if I
may take the liberty to speak on such a subject, is, though I suppose a
sadness, not perhaps an unmixed evil. For though your pecuniary troubles
have been discovered to the world and yourself by it, your happiness in
marriage was, as you have confided to me, not great; and you are now left
free as a bird to follow your own hobbies.' 'I wonder you recognize that.' 'But perhaps,' he added, with a sigh of regret, 'you will again fall a
prey to some man, some uninteresting country squire or other, and be lost
to the scientific world after all.' 'If I fall a prey to any man, it will not be to a country squire. But
don't go on with this, for heaven's sake! You may think what you like in
silence.' 'We are forgetting the comet,' said St. Cleeve. He turned, and set the
instrument in order for observation, and wheeled round the dome.
While she was looking at the nucleus of the fiery plume, that now filled
so large a space of the sky as completely to dominate it, Swithin dropped
his gaze upon the field, and beheld in the dying light a number of
labourers crossing directly towards the column.
'What do you see?' Lady Constantine asked, without ceasing to observe the
comet.
'Some of the work-folk are coming this way. I know what they are coming
for,--I promised to let them look at the comet through the glass.' 'They must not come up here,' she said decisively.