"But at lunch my father said a change had come, and a thaw was setting in. And before we had done, a note arrived from Emmie, telling me that the ice was unsafe, and that Edred had to hurry back to town to-day. So this time I shall not even see him."
"It does seem sometimes as if life were all made up of disappointments."
[CHAPTER VI]
A POSSIBLE ACQUAINTANCE
DOROTHEA built a good deal upon the promised call from Mrs. Effingham. As one day after another passed, and nobody came, she began to feel flat. Not knowing the old lady's address, she could not ask after her, so nothing remained but to wait.
Three days after Christmas, the frost broke up and a spell of mild weather set in. Dorothea had her morning rambles pretty regularly, but she found the long afternoons and evenings hard to get through, whether alone, or in wordless attendance on her occupied father. What he was always so busy about, Dorothea could not make out. He sent her upstairs or downstairs for books, and sometimes he set her to work copying dry extracts, but he gave no reasons or explanations.
She could not flatter herself that he grew less silent. All her efforts to call out his interest and sympathy were at present a failure.
The oppression of this continual silence was creeping over Dorothea herself. She could not persist in talk which had no response. Silent walks, silent meals, silent tête-à-têtes with the Colonel,—these were steadily subduing her young spirits. At thirty or forty, she could have struck out her own way of life, could have made her own work and interests. At eighteen, she was not free.
A Christmas card had come from Mrs. Kirkpatrick, but no letter. Dorothea, had begun to long with actual heart-sick craving for a letter, a word, a smile, from somebody. Anything to break the dead monotony of her present existence. Yet when New Year's Day brought from happy schoolfellows eager scrawls about their home delights, she had a little shower of tears over them. Her own lot was so different.