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Updated: June 24, 2025
Mavis rose, placed a hand on each arm of Perigal's chair, and leant over so as to look him full in the eyes, as she said icily: "Do you know what you are saying?" "Eh! Dear little Mavis. You take everything so seriously," he remarked, as he kissed her lightly on the cheek. She sat back in her chair, uneasy, troubled: vague, unwholesome, sordid shadows seemed to gather about her.
They had been talking lightly, brightly, each in secret pursuing the bent of their own feelings for the other, when the spectre of Mavis's spiritual troublings blotted out the sunlight and the brilliant gladness of the summer afternoon. She was silent for awhile, presently to be aware that Perigal's eyes were fixed on her face. She looked towards him, at which he sighed deeply.
One summer afternoon, while Harold rested indoors, Mavis gave Perigal tea beneath the shade of a witch-elm on the lawn. She was looking particularly alluring; if she were at all doubtful of this fact, the admiration expressed in Perigal's eyes would have reassured her.
In this she had told him of the circumstances in which she was writing it, and had said that if it proved to be the last letter she should send him, that she would never cease to love and trust him in any world to which it might please God to take her. This was all she had written; but the moving simplicity of her words might have touched even Perigal's heart.
Perigal's eyes glittered, a manifestation which Mavis noticed. "You know how you used to laugh at my belief in Providence." "Is that how you want me to help?" "If you will." Perigal's face fell. "Fire away," he said, as he lit a cigarette. Mavis told him something of her perplexities. "I want to see things clearly. I want to find out exactly where I am. Everything's so confusing and contradictory.
Then, beyond sighing for the peace of the country, she had believed that she had only to secure a means of winning her daily bread in order to be happy. Now, although she had obtained the two desires of her heart, she was not even content. Perigal's words awoke in her memory: "No sooner was a desire satisfied, than one was at once eager for something else."
When she was alone, as now, her pride was irked at the fact of her not being a bride; she believed that the tenacious way in which she had husbanded her affections gave her every right to expect the privilege of wifehood. It was, also, then she realised that her very life depended upon the continuance of Perigal's love: she had no doubt that he would marry her with as little delay as possible.
"Who was that distinguished-looking man who sat on Mrs Charles Perigal's right?" asked Mavis. "That's Lord Robert Keevil, whose brother is the great tin-god 'Seend." "The Marquis of Seend?" queried Mavis. "That's it: he was foreign minister in the last Government. But Bobbie Keevil is adorable till he's foolish enough to open his mouth. Then he gives the game away." "What do you mean?"
He was her life, her love, her all. She trusted and believed in him implicitly. She was sure that she would love him till the last moment of her life. With this thought in her heart, with his name on her lips, the while she clutched Perigal's ring, which Miss Toombs's generosity had enabled her to get out of pawn, she fell asleep. The first post brought two letters.
Mrs Gowler sat impassively on the only chair in the room, while Jill watched her mistress with frightened eyes from a corner. Now and again, when a specially violent pain tormented her body, Mavis would grip the head rail of the bed with her hands, or bite Perigal's ring, which she wore suspended from her neck.
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