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The hall of Bannisdale, with the lingering daylight of the north still coming in at ten o'clock through the uncurtained oriel windows herself at the piano, Augustina on the settle a scent of night and flowers spreading through the dim place from the open windows of the drawing-room beyond. One candle is beside her and there are strange glints of moonlight here and there on the panelling.
Then again, why not go to the inn? Could she not easily have found a woman on whom to throw herself, who would have befriended her? Or why not have tried to get a carriage? Fifteen miles to Marsland eighteen to Bannisdale. Even in this small place, and at midnight, the promise of money enough would probably have found her a fly and a driver. But these thoughts only rose to be shuddered away.
"You didn't expect to see me in this dress, Miss Fountain? Let me walk a few steps with you, if I may. You perhaps hadn't heard that I had left the Jesuits and ceased indeed to be a Catholic." Her mind whirled, as she recognised the scholastic. She saw the study at Bannisdale and Helbeck bending over her. "No, indeed I had not heard," she stammered, as they walked on. "Was it long ago?"
It brought her somehow near to Helbeck, and to Bannisdale. To-day, however, she could not tear herself from the breeze and the sun. She sat among the daffodils, in a sort of sad delight, wondering sometimes at the veil that had dropped between her and beauty dulling and darkening all things. Surely Cousin Elizabeth would bring a letter from Augustina. Every day she had been expecting it.
Fountain's was more marked than ever. His face, which in the first days at Bannisdale had begun to recover a certain boyish bloom, became again white and drawn. The eyes were scarcely ever seen; if, by some rare chance, the heavy lids did lift, the fire and brilliance of the gaze below were startling to the bystander.
Was she to cast him off for ever at the mere bidding of the Helbecks and their friends? He would never, of course, be allowed to enter the Bannisdale drawing-room, and she had no intention at present of going to Browhead Farm. Well, then, under the skies and the clouds! A gracious pardon, an appropriate lecture and a short farewell. All that day and the next Laura gave herself to her whim.
Next morning the Squire left Bannisdale early. He was to be away two days on important business. Before he left he reluctantly told his sister that the Romney would probably be removed before his return, by the dealer to whom it had been sold. Laura did not appear at breakfast, and Helbeck left a written word of farewell, that Augustina delivered.
She does not work, indeed, on so large a canvas as in Robert Elsmere, nor do her materials allow her to be quite so interesting as in that masterpiece. At all events, that is my individual opinion. The atmosphere is very close throughout the book, and one has a feeling that the windows of that old, old house of Bannisdale have not been opened for centuries. One breathes a stifling air.
There was something in the afternoon that reminded her of her earliest impressions of Bannisdale and its fell country of those rainy March winds that were blowing about her when she first alighted at the foot of the old tower. The association made her tremble and catch her breath. It was not all joy oh! far from it! The sweet common rapture of common love was not hers.
At any rate she talked more, and with more vigour; she was more liable to opinions of her own; and in these days there was that going on at Bannisdale which provoked opinion in great plenty. "Miss Fountain is not at home?" remarked the old priest. An afternoon gossip with Mrs. Fountain had become a very common feature of his recent life.
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