Moke got the perquisite and Richard got his letter, but it did not seem to give him much pleasure. Phyllis noticed that after reading it he was unhappy and troubled. He took an hour’s promenade on the piazza, and then sat down beside her. “Phyllis,” he said, “we have both been unfortunate in our love. You stooped too low, and I looked too high. John has not money enough; Elizabeth has too much.”
“You are wronging both Elizabeth and John. What has Elizabeth done or said?”
“There is a change in her, though I cannot define it. Her letters are less frequent; they are shorter; they are full of Antony and his wild, ambitious schemes. They keep the form, but they lack the spirit, of her first letters.”
“It is nearly two years since you parted.”
“Yes.”
“Go and see her. Absence does not make the heart grow fonder. If it did, we should never forget the dead. Those who touch us move us. Go and see Elizabeth again. Women worth loving want wooing.”
“Will you go with me?”
“Do not ask me. I doubt whether I could bear the tossing to and fro for so many days, and I want to stay where I can hear from John.”
There was much further talk upon the subject, but the end of it was that Richard sailed for England in the early summer. He hardly expected to renew the enthusiasm of his first visit, and he was prepared for changes; and, perhaps, he felt the changes more because those to whom they had come slowly and separately were hardly conscious of them. Elizabeth was a different woman, although she would have denied it. Her character had matured, and was, perhaps, less winning. She had fully accepted the position of heiress of Hallam, and Richard could feel that it was a controlling influence in her life. Physically she was much handsomer, stately as a queen, fair and radiant, and “most divinely tall.”
She drove into Leeds to meet the stage which brought Richard, and was quite as demonstrative as he had any right to expect; but he felt abashed slightly by her air of calm authority. He forgot that when he had seen her first she was in a comparatively dependent position, and that she was now prospective lady of the manor. It was quite natural that she should have taken on a little dignity, and it was not natural that she should all at once discard it for her lover.