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Wanless had her steadily in its score pair of eyes for twenty-four hours, as Purcell, her maid, had foreseen. "You are doing a strange thing, ma'am, permit me to say." Purcell was an elderly spinster, who only required her own permission to say what she pleased. "You will be watched and reported. I suppose I am not in the servants' hall for nothing." Mrs.
From Torquay, where she spent the Easter holidays with her father, the two alone and happily together, she wrote two or three times to Nevile. He was at Wanless, professedly getting some order into things there, and protesting to her by every word he sent her upon the need there was of her hand upon affairs. There was not a word of love used between the pair.
Mrs. Wilmot stayed for the better part of a week longer than she had intended, and then, perceiving by subtle but unmistakeable signs that she would wiselier go, went. To Wanless that had been a week of strain; the air was charged with trouble. One could not have pointed to anything it was beyond the range of weathercock or glass; but everybody felt it.
Senhouse read without falter or comment: "A marriage is arranged, and will take place in July, between Nevile Ingram of Wanless Hall, Felsboro', Yorks, and Sanchia-Josepha, youngest daughter of Thomas Welbore Percival of Great Cumberland Place, W., and The Poultry, E.G." In that night, or very early in the morning, Glyde disappeared without word or sign left behind him.
Poring and smiling into the fire, she looked like a Sibyl envisaging the fate of men, not concerned in it, yet absorbed, interested in the play, not at all in the persons. This friend of Mrs. Benson, this midnight mate of young gardeners, disturber of high ladies' comfort, serene controller of Wanless, she was, it would seem, all things to all men, as men could take her.
Without knowing it, it was life she wanted, not books. She with her brains, vitality, beauty, and charm had been growing in these graces unawares, flowering in secret at Wanless under her aprons, behind her account-books and garden gloves. Now that all these swaddling bands were stripped off her, behold her, armed at all points for the lists. So Chevenix had beheld her, it seems.
It seemed that she had made a clean break, and that nothing of what had made her dawning life sweet and sane was to mingle with the sweetness and sanity which she had brought into Wanless. And then after eight years she caught herself looking back. And now here was an end of the dream.
All the love-making, indeed, was done by Senhouse, whose master-stroke was called for by and by. Towards the end of April she was alone in Charles Street, preparing the house for Lady Maria's return from Rome. Ingram was still at Wanless, grumbling through his duties of magistrate, landlord, and county gentleman.
And then she related, as if they were an anecdote, the circumstances of her departure from Wanless. Lady Maria listened carefully, nodding a dispassionate head at details which would have raised Philippa's hair, and depilated Mrs. Percival. "I think he's a human being, if you'll allow me to say so," was the conclusion she came to.
A person of great simplicity, who did extraordinary things in an ordinary way, at the hour when all Wanless was going to bed, she brushed and banded her shining hair, and dressed herself in silk and lace as for a dinner party. To herself in the glass she gave and received again a face of pure pity and sorrow. She saw herself lovely and love-worthy, sleek under the caress of her own beauty.
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