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It was amusing to walk home to dinner together this bright summer's day, and to tell this young man, to whose intervention it pleased her to think that she owed her reconciliation to her father, how it was by pretending not to understand the new harpsichord that she had inveigled her father into speaking to her.... But it was only one o'clock an hour still remained before dinner would be ready at Dowlands, and they were glad to dream it under the delicious chestnut trees.
About twelve months after Guy's sudden disappearance, however, a new element entered into Elma's life. At first sight, it seemed to have but little to do with the secret of her soul. It was merely that the new purchaser of the Dowlands estate had built herself a pretty little Queen Anne house on the ground, and come to live in it.
The most popular excursion is to the Landslip at Dowlands. The nature of the scenery is so strange and bizarre, as well as beautiful, that it would impress the most stolid and sophisticated as something quite out of the common. North of the town are the villages of Colyford and Colyton; visitors are usually content to view these from the train, but they are worthy of closer inspection.
None remembered that Dowlands was the name of Henry the Eight's favourite lute player, and there was nothing in the snug masonry to suggest an æstheticism of any kind. The dulcimers, lutes and virginals surprised the visitor coming in from the street, and he stayed his steps as he might on the threshold of a fairy land. The villas, of which Dowlands was one, were a builder's experiment.
It was near Lyme Regis that on Christmas, 1839, the Dowlands landslip took place, an area of forty acres sliding down the cliff to a lower level, roughly removing two cottages and an orchard in the descent.
Cyril was sure the unknown benefactor shared it too, for Guy's six thousand pounds were never paid in to his credit as indeed how could they, since Colonel Kelmscott, who had promised to pay them, died before receiving the balance of the purchase money for the Dowlands estate?
So a good deal of time was wasted in conversation in which neither was interested. Before they were aware, they were at Dowlands, and with an accent of regret in her voice, which Owen noticed with pleasure, she held out her hand and said good-bye. "Are you very busy, then, are you expecting a pupil?" "No, I have nothing to do." "Then why should we say good-bye?
Hearing Ulick speak of foreseeing and divinations by the stars was, too, like sweet rain in a dying land; and as they returned to Dowlands, she spoke to him of Moy Mell where Boadag is king, of the Plain of the Ever Living, of Connla and the Fairy Maiden gliding in the crystal boat over the Western Sea, and during dinner she longed to ask him if he believed in a future life.
A few moments after they were at Dowlands. She was trembling, and had no strength of will to refuse to ask him in. She would have had the strength if she had not been obliged to give him her hand. She had tried to bid him good-bye without giving her hand, and had not succeeded, and while he held her hand her lips said the words without her knowing it.
There was no corner of her life into which she could look without finding a lie. She had been faithful to no one, not even to Owen. She had another lover, and she had sent Owen away on account of scruples of conscience! She could not understand herself; she had taken Ulick to Dowlands and had lived with him there in her father's house.
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