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Updated: June 2, 2025
She waited in silence while Gabrielle mastered her own feelings and raised, at last, her haggard eyes. "What can you say to my husband?" she said. "We must say that I am ill. That will give you a good reason for returning." "And Arthur?" "The same reason will explain why he doesn't go back to Lapton on Tuesday. After that I don't know what I shall do." "But I can see him before I go?"
He never mentioned Gabrielle's name to her again. Next morning, in a calm and serious mood, he approached her on the subject of his return to Lapton. "Would you mind very much," he said, "if I don't go back to Devonshire? I feel that I'm rather out of place there. You see, I'm older than the others. Do you think it could be arranged?"
Considine, for instance, admittedly touchy on the subject of Gabrielle, might refuse to believe her and show her the door. Arthur would be forced to leave Lapton; and she thought too highly of Considine's influence on him to run the risk of a relapse. On the other hand Considine might believe her, and put the very worst construction on what she told him.
There remained Gabrielle, and though she knew that she was old enough to speak to Gabrielle with the authority of a mother, she felt that this would be impossible at Lapton. It was a curious attitude that she found difficult to explain, but it seemed to her that to tackle Mrs. Considine in her husband's house was dangerous, that it would give to Gabrielle an unreasonable but inevitable advantage.
Payne, but destroyed the letter, feeling that a sudden revival of her custom when Arthur was no longer at Lapton would seem merely ridiculous. The Christmas holidays were a dreary time for her. Deserted by all youth the Manor House slipped back into its ancient and melancholy peace. Winter descended on them.
He told Gabrielle nothing of this he was not in the habit of discussing business matters with Gabrielle but he rode over to Halberton House one day with an elaborate and practical paper scheme. He proposed, in effect, to vacate the Rectory, and take over Lapton Manor as it stood. The idea had been suggested to him at first by one of the consequences of Gabrielle's social success.
In winter the county families went to sleep like dormice, so that no strange-calling conveyances passed the lodge-gates at Lapton, and the life of Gabrielle was like that of those sad roses that lingered on the south wall beneath her bedroom window in a state that was neither life nor death. If she had shared Considine's interest in his profession things might have been different.
Day after day he waited for a letter from Lapton with eagerness. There was no reason why he shouldn't have been anxious to know that his present had not gone astray. She had not seen the note that Arthur posted with his flowers. With no more than the vaguest mistrust for she still felt that in some way she had fallen short of full possession, Mrs.
She even prepared to deny herself her usual privilege of a visit to Lapton in term-time, feeling that it would be unfair of her to interrupt the progress of Considine's remarkable system.
They spent the greater part of his spare time together, and often, at hours when he would normally have been working with Considine, she would ask for him to take her driving into Totnes or Dartmouth, their two market towns. In the evenings they would walk out together in search of air along the lip of the basin in which Lapton Manor lay. On one of these evening walks a strange thing happened.
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