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She let her lids droop over her tell-tale eyes, and stood beside the couch for a long, eloquent moment, during which the flickering colour deepened on Elma's cheek; then turned aside, took down a book from a shelf, and settled herself comfortably on a wicker chair. "I guess we understand one another, and there's no more to be said.
Elma felt nearly driven to distraction. All her future depended on the character which she was able to maintain at school. She did not, and she knew it, belong to the best class of girls who attended Middleton School. Elma's father was a man of bad reputation. He had long ago disgraced his family, and had been obliged to go to Australia. Mrs.
Her easy graciousness of manner became suddenly instinct with patronage, her eyelids drooped with languid disdain. She sauntered round the room, giving a touch here and there, turned over the garments which her maid had laid on the bed ready for Elma's use, and finally sailed towards the door. "We will leave you to rest, then, as long as you think fit. Pray ring for anything you require!"
It was with a different look that Horace entered his home the next evening; a shadow fell on Elma's heart when she saw him, and the evening meal passed in silence. "What are you thinking of, Horace?" she timidly asked, some time after, approaching him as he stood by the window, gazing out gloomily into the star-lighted street. "I have received a better offer, and have determined to accept it."
She hesitated whether to go straight to the school and wait there until nine o'clock or to return to Constantine Road. After a little reflection she decided on the latter course. She reached home hot and weary between eight and nine o'clock. Carrie was seated at the breakfast table; a letter lay on Elma's plate.
He spoke very quietly and reassuringly, as if being shut up in a fallen tunnel between two masses of earth were a matter that needn't cause one the slightest uneasiness; but his words suggested to Elma's mind a fresh and hitherto unthought-of danger. "Eighteen hours," she cried, horror-struck. "Do you mean to say we may have to stop here, all alone, for eighteen hours together?
The woman isn't born who could come out of that gown the same as she went in!" She lifted the blue serge skirt over Elma's head, and surveyed the plain hem with tragic eyes. "It's pretty hard luck to be born a woman instead of a man, but it softens it some to have a swirl of frills round one's ankles! If I'd to poke around with a hem, I'd give up altogether.
But Elma's sharp senses, now quickened by the crisis, were acute as an Oriental's and keen as a beagle's. "Break the pipe of the wires," they say, she exclaimed, starting back and pondering. "What on earth can they mean by that? What on earth can they be driving at? 'Break the pipe of the wires. I don't understand them."
You have been the angel of my life still more during our separation; for my soul has yearned for your dear presence constantly, and every day I have said to myself, 'Would this please Elma? and when I have been enabled to do a kindness, my heart glowed at the thought of Elma's approval. Your blessed spirit never seems so near to me as when I lift up my soul in prayer.
The Companion of the Militant Saints glanced rather uneasily across the hearth-rug at his wife. "It's a marvellous gift, to be sure, this intuition of yours, Louisa," he said, shaking his head sagely, and swaying himself gently to and fro on the stone kerb of the fender. "I frankly confess, my dear, I don't quite understand it. And Elma's got it too, every bit as bad as you have.
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