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Updated: June 29, 2025
Pierston however dismissed the strange impression, arguing that even if the information sent him of Avice's death should be false a thing incredible that sweet friend of his youth, despite the transfiguring effects of moonlight, would not now look the same as she had appeared nineteen or twenty years ago. Were what he saw substantial flesh, it must have been some other person than Avice Caro.
He did not know that she had noted every impression that her daughter had made upon him. How he contrived to attenuate and disperse the rather tender personalities he had opened up with the new Avice's mother, Pierston never exactly defined. Perhaps she saw more than he thought she saw read something in his face knew that about his nature which he gave her no credit for knowing.
He could see in the far distance the door of Avice's room; but that thoughtful housewife had not heard the second capture. From the room came a soft breathing like that of an infant. He entered his own chamber and reclined himself gloomily enough.
He had reached the brow of the hill, and descended towards the village, where in the long straight Roman street he soon found the lighted hall. The performance was not yet over; and by going round to the side of the building and standing on a mound he could see the interior as far down as the platform level. Avice's turn, or second turn, came on almost immediately.
"And t'others, they had me too. Thee try to run with a wild dragon holding on to thy hair, and three more to thy arms and legs just do! I wonder I'm not tore to bits I do. Howsome'er, here I be; and I just wish I could stop. Ay, I do so!" And Dan's apron took another journey round his face. "Uncle Dan, would you like to take Bertha back?" was Avice's self-sacrificing suggestion.
But she was a woman; and her lips quivered, and there was a tear in her eye, as she exposed the ruthless treatment to which she had subjected herself. The cruel morning rays as with Jocelyn under Avice's scrutiny showed in their full bareness, unenriched by addition, undisguised by the arts of colour and shade, the thin remains of what had once been Marcia's majestic bloom.
And Dan, at first astounded beyond measure, grew to accept this conclusion as a matter of course, and to say "Let her alone, and she'll come round." And then Avice's eyes were opened. One day, when she was unusually softened by the death of Susanna's baby, Filomena opened her heart to her niece. "Eh, Avice, it's hard work! Nobody knows how hard, that hasn't had a temper as mastered 'em.
They retired rather early, as they always did, but Pierston remained pacing about his studio a long while, musing on many things, not the least being the perception that to wed a woman may be by no means the same thing as to be united with her. The 'old friend' of Avice's remark had sounded very much like 'lover. Otherwise why should the letter have so greatly disturbed her?
When Saint Philip's day dawned my darling lay in her bed, with her fair eyes turned up to heaven and her hands folded in prayer; and who may know what she said to God, or yet more what He told to her? She had never been taught to pray; she could not be." Avice's only notion of prayer was repeating a form of words, and keeping time by a string of beads.
His intention had been to go back to the house in half-an-hour and pay a morning visit to the invalid; but by not returning the plans of the previous evening might be allowed to lapse silently, as mere pourparlers that had come to nothing in the face of Avice's want of love for him. Pierston accordingly went straight along, and in the course of an hour was at his Budmouth lodgings.
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