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Updated: June 5, 2025
She had for some time ceased to be content with the position at Marbridge and the society there; she wanted to be recognised by the "county." This desire had been growing of late, for there had been a very eligible and attractive bachelor addition to that charmed circle, and he had more than once looked admiration her way.
He found himself mentally contrasting the life at the Van Heigens', as she described it, with that which he had imagined her to have led at Marbridge, and, now that he talked to her, he could not find her exact place in either. "You must find Dutch conventionality rather trying," he said at last.
But at last spring came; late and with bitter winds and showers of sleet, but none the less wonderful, especially as one had to look to see the tentative signs of its coming. March in Marbridge used to mean violets and daffodils, tender green shoots and balmy middays.
Their plans and doings were naturally not confided to any one, not even Julia; she heard seldom from Marbridge; the family feelings were of a somewhat utilitarian order, based largely on mutual benefit.
The opportunity did not occur quite so soon as he expected; several things intervened, so that he had been home more than a week before he was able to fulfil his intention. Marbridge lies in the west country, some considerable distance from London; Rawson-Clew did not reach it till the afternoon, at an hour devoted by the Polkingtons most exclusively to things social.
Polkington made inquiries among her friends, but could not hear of any one suitable; she said it was very tiresome, especially as they had taken advantage of the girl's empty room to invite an old Anglo-Indian friend of her husband's to stay. Thus was the difficulty tided over, and with so good a face that few in Marbridge had any idea that it existed.
It was a mercy he had it, for there was no known work at which he could have earned sixpence, unless perhaps it was road scraping under a not too exacting District Council. He was a harmless enough person, but when he took it into his head to leave his lodgings in town for others, equally cheap and nasty, at Marbridge, Mrs. Polkington felt fate was hard upon her.
Cheered by these thoughts he endured the discomforts of the journey with moderate patience; he almost felt that he was suffering them in a good cause, for the sake of Johnny and Julia. The town was large and the centre of a large district, not at all like the retired gentility of Marbridge, very much bigger and busier.
It had stirred before, rebelling against the shams of the Marbridge life, as it rebelled against the restrictions of the present; it had never had scope or found vent; still, for all that it was not dead; possibly, even, it was growing stronger; it called her now to run away.
He turned in his saddle just below the window to speak to his companion, and she noticed that it was a stranger with him, a man wearing a single eyeglass, ten years older than the other, and of a totally different stamp. Indeed, of a stamp differing from any she had seen at Marbridge, so much so that she wondered how he came to be here, and what he was doing.
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