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Updated: May 24, 2025
Swancourt said to Stephen the following morning, 'so I got Lord Luxellian's permission to send for a man when you came. I told him to be there at ten o'clock. He's a very intelligent man, and he will tell you all you want to know about the state of the walls. His name is John Smith. Elfride did not like to be seen again at the church with Stephen.
'So you are to come just the same, urged Mrs. Swancourt, for she had seen an almost imperceptible fall of countenance in her stepdaughter at Knight's announcement. Knight half promised to call on his return journey; but the uncertainty with which he spoke was quite enough to fill Elfride with a regretful interest in all he did during the few remaining hours.
'And then we'll go to London, and then to Paris, said Mrs. Swancourt. 'I have been talking to your father about it. But we have first to move into the manor-house, and we think of staying at Torquay whilst that is going on. Meanwhile, instead of going on a honeymoon scamper by ourselves, we have come home to fetch you, and go all together to Bath for two or three weeks.
'I think Miss Swancourt very clever, Stephen observed. 'Yes, she is; certainly, she is, said papa, turning his voice as much as possible to the neutral tone of disinterested criticism. 'Now, Smith, I'll tell you something; but she mustn't know it for the world not for the world, mind, for she insists upon keeping it a dead secret.
I may have acquired some skill in this practice through having been an ugly lonely woman for so many years, with nobody to give me information; a thing you will not consider strange when the parallel case is borne in mind, how truly people who have no clocks will tell the time of day. 'Ay, that they will, said Mr. Swancourt corroboratively.
She involuntarily looked at her father so strangely, that on becoming conscious of the look she paled with embarrassment. Her father, too, looked confused. What was he thinking of? There seemed to be a special facility offered her by a power external to herself in the circumstance that Mr. Swancourt had proposed to leave home the night previous to her wished-for day.
'And what became of the baby? said Stephen, who had frequently heard portions of the story. 'She was brought up by her grandmother, and a pretty maid she were. And she must needs run away with the curate Parson Swancourt that is now. Then her grandmother died, and the title and everything went away to another branch of the family altogether.
Elfride saw her father then, and went away into the wind, being caught by a gust as she ascended the churchyard slope, in which gust she had the motions, without the motives, of a hoiden; the grace, without the self-consciousness, of a pirouetter. She conversed for a minute or two with her father, and proceeded homeward, Mr. Swancourt coming on to the church to Stephen.
'Why, Miss Swancourt, what a risky thing to do! he exclaimed, immediately following her example by jumping down on the other side. 'Oh no, not at all, replied she coldly; the shadow phenomenon at Endelstow House still paramount within her. Stephen walked along by himself for two or three minutes, wrapped in the rigid reserve dictated by her tone.
But I am only jesting, child you know that. 'Piph-ph-ph how warm it is, to be sure! said Mr. Swancourt, as if his mind were a long distance from all he saw. 'I declare that my watch is so hot that I can scarcely bear to touch it to see what the time is, and all the world smells like the inside of a hat. 'How the men stare at you, Elfride! said the elder lady.
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