His hands trembled that held this the first sign of her since he had left her in the drive at Abbey Royal on that night eighteen months before, and his breath ran quick. The first sign! He had urged her at their parting he might write to her. She had desired he should not. Letters at the French school might only come, it appeared, from parents, or in handwriting authorised by parents, and only to such quarters might be addressed. He had accepted the fate. Nay, well it should be so, he had told her. He would not—could not, for he loved her so!—see her again, be the time never so long, till somehow he had won some place in the world; very well, not even write to her. Their hearts alone should bind them: "For, Dora, you are to be mine. Somehow I shall do it—not see you till I have. You will remember—that is all, remember."
How had she remembered? He broke the seal and held his breath to read.
She wrote from Burdon House in Mount Street: explaining the address as though he had not known Mrs. Espart had taken it on lease at the time of Lord Burdon's death:—
DEAR PERCIVAL,
We returned here yesterday from the South of France, where we have been with Rollo and Lady Burdon. Did you know that Mother has taken Rollo's house here until he wants it and turns us out? I am writing for Rollo. I think you will be distressed to learn that he has been very ill—beginning with pneumonia. But we left him better, and they are following us to London soon. He most urgently desired me to tell you this, and that you must come and see him then. He says that he must see you again; and, indeed, he is forever talking of you. As to that, I must tell you that when I was with him we saw in an illustrated paper some pictures entitled "Life among the Showmen;" and in one, on a tent was to be seen "Gentleman Percival." From what Rollo told us, that was your tent. He was very excited about it; and to me it was very singular to have come upon it like that.
Well, I have written his address on the back of this, and you must certainly write to him or he will think that I have not told you and that I side with Lady Burdon and Mother in estimating that you are "very wild," which I do not.
I address this to your home; but it is hard to know if it will ever reach you.
Yours sincerely,
DORA ESPART.
How had she remembered? No trace of any memory of love was in the lines he carried to his lips and read again and many times again. He reckoned nothing of that. He read what he had expected to find. He read herself, as in the months that separated that magic hour in the drive he had come again to think of her—as one as purely, rarely, chastely different from her sisters as driven snow upon the Downside from snow that thaws along the road; as one that he should never have dared terrify by his rough ardour into that swooning "Oh, Percival, what is it, this?" Realising that moment of his passion, he sometimes writhed in self-reproach to think how violently he must have distressed her: sometimes hoped she had forgotten it—else surely shame of how her delicacy had been ravished at his hands would make her shrink at meeting him again. So this letter that had no hint of memory of love rejoiced and moved him to his depths. Unchanged from his boyish adoration of her, it revealed her, and unchanged he would have her be. Its precise air, its selected words, its stilted phrases, spoke to him as with her very voice—"It was very singular to me;" "It is hard to know:" as icicles broken in the hand! Snow-White-and-Rose-Red—and frozen snow and frozen red!
He was ardent and atremble in the resolve that he must get to London on Rollo's return and make old Rollo the excuse to see her again—touch her, perhaps; speak to her, ah!—then, and not till then, bethought him of his second letter. From Aunt Maggie; and he drew it from his pocket with prick of shame at his neglect of it. He had from time to time written to Aunt Maggie. Her letters were less frequent; easier to write to "Post Offic" than for "Post Offic" to write to him, ever on the move.