'Was he still vexed?' Dolly, who had relented the moment she saw the handwriting, wrote him a little note that evening, by moonlight, and asked Marker to post it.
I could not leave Mamma all alone (she wrote). I wanted to walk home with you—couldn't you see that I did? I shall expect you to come to luncheon to-morrow, and we will go wherever you like.—D.
Dolly lay awake after this for a long moonlight hour. She was living in what people call the world of feeling. She was absorbed, she was happy, but it was a happiness with a reserve in it. It was peace indeed, but Dolly was too young, her life had been too easy, for peace to be all-sufficient to her. She had found out, by her new experience, that Robert loved her, but in future that he would rule her too. In her life, so free hitherto, there would be this secret rule to be obeyed, this secret sign. Dolly did not know whether on the whole she liked the thought, or whether she resented it. She had never spoken of it, even to Robert. 'You see you have to do as you are told,' Henley sometimes said; he meant it in fun, but Dorothea instinctively felt that there was truth in his words—he was a man who held his own. He was not to be changed by an impulse. Dolly, conscious of some hidden weakness in her own nature, deified obstinacy, as many a woman has done before her, and made excuses out of her own loving heart for Henley's selfish one.
It was summer still, though August had come again; the Virginian creepers along the west wall glowed; crimson-tinted leaves fell in golden rain, the gardener swept up golden dollars and fairy money into heaps and carted them away; the geraniums put out shoots; the creepers started off upon excursions along the gravel-paths: it was a comfortable old-fashioned world, deep-coloured, russet-tinted, but the sun was hot still and burning, and Dolly dressed herself in white, and listened to every bell.
The day passed, however, without any sign of Robert, or any word from him. But George walked in just as they were sitting down to luncheon. He looked very pale and yellow, and he had black lines under his eyes. He had been staying down at Cambridge, actually reading for a scholarship that Raban had advised his trying for. It was called the Bulbul scholarship for Oriental languages, and it had been founded by an enlightened Parsee, who had travelled in Europe in shiny boots and an oilskin hat, and who had been so well received at Cambridge that he wished to perpetuate his name there.
George had taken up Persian some time ago, when he should have been reading mathematics. He was fond of quoting the 'Roubaiyát' of Omar Khayyám, of which the beautiful English version had lately appeared. It was this poem, indeed, which had set him to study the original. He had a turn for languages, and a fair chance of success, Raban said, if he would only go to bed, and not sit up all night, with soda-water and wet towels round his head. This time he had nearly made himself ill, by sitting up three nights in succession, and the doctor had him sent home for a holiday.
'My dear child, what a state your complexion is in! How ill you look!' said his mother. 'It is all those horrid examinations!'
Restless George wandered out into the garden after dinner, and Dolly followed him. She began to water her roses in the cool of the evening, and George filled the cans with water from the tank and brought them to her. Splashing and overflowing, the water lapped into the dry earth and washed the baked stems of the rose-trees. George said suddenly, 'Dolly, do you ever see Raban now, and do you still snub him?'
'I don't snub him,' said Dolly, blushing. 'He does not approve of me, George. He is so bitter, and he never seems satisfied.'
George began to recite—