Sir Thomas meekly suggested Robert Henley.
'The very last person I should wish to see,' cried Lady Henley, sharply. 'Bell, did you ever know your father understand anything one said to him?'
Lady Henley's concern was relieved without Sir Thomas's assistance. Before the end of the winter Mrs. Palmer had left Henley Court and firmly established herself at Paris. Dolly remained behind. It was Philippa's arrangement, and Dolly had been glad to agree to her cousins' eager proposal that she should stay on at Henley for a time. Nobody quite knew how it had happened, except, indeed, that Philippa had intended it all along; and she now wrote in raptures with the climate, so different from what they had been enduring in Yorkshire. But Joanna did not care for climate—her Palmer constitution was not susceptible to the influence of atmosphere.
All through that sad winter Dolly stayed on in Yorkshire. Their kindness was unwearied. Then, when the snow began to melt at last, the heavy clouds of winter to lighten, when the spring began to dawn, and the summer sun and the sweet tones of natural things to thrill and stir the world to life, Dolly, too, began to breathe again; she could not enjoy all this beauty, but it comforted her, nevertheless.
The silence of the country was very tranquillising and quieting. She had come like a tired child, sad and over-wearied. Mother Nature was hushing her off to sleep at last. She spent long mornings in the meadows down by the river; sometimes her cousins took her for walks across the moors, but to Dolly they seemed more like birds than human beings, and she had not strength for their ten-mile flights.
'You know what our life is,' she wrote to Robert, 'and I need not describe it. I try to help my uncle a little of a morning. I go out driving with my aunt, or into the village of an afternoon with Norah; the wind comes cutting through the trees by the lodge-gate—all the roads are heavy with snow. Everything seems very cold and sad—everything except their kindness, which I shall never forget. Yesterday Aunt Joanna kissed me, and looked at me so kindly that I found myself crying suddenly. Dear Robert, she showed me the letter you wrote her. I cannot help saying one word about that one word in it in which you speak of your doubting that I wish for your return. Why do you say such things or think such unjust thoughts of me? Your return is the one bright spot in my life just now. Did I not tell you so when you went away? If I have ever failed, even loved you less than you wished, scold me, dear Robert, as I am scolding you now, and I will love you the more for it. You and I can understand, but it is hard to explain, even to my aunt, how things stand between us. I trust you utterly, and I am quite content to leave my fate to you.'
She sat writing by the fire on her knee as she warmed herself by the embers. She paused once or twice and looked into the flame with her sweet dreamy eyes. Where do people travel to as they sit quietly dreaming and warming their feet at the fire? What long, aimless journeys into other countries, into other hearts! What strange starts and returns! Dolly finds herself by the little well in Kensington Gardens, and some one is there, who says things in a strange voice that thrills as Robert's never did. Does he call her his Rachel? Is love a chord? It had seemed to her one single note until Frank Raban had spoken. Is this Robert who is saying that she is the one only woman in all the world for him? Dolly blushes a burning blush of shame all alone as she sits in the twilight when she discovers of what she had been thinking.
'What are you burning, Dolly?' said her aunt, coming in.
It was her letter that Dolly had thrown into the fire. It had seemed to her false somehow, and yet she wrote another to the same effect next day.
Mr. Anley was going to Paris, and Dolly was to go with him. On the last day before she left her uncle took her for a drive. He had business beyond Pebblesthwaite, and while he went into a house Dolly wandered on through an open gate, and by a little path that led across a field to a stream and a great bleating and barking and rushing of waters. It was early spring. As she came round by the bridge she saw a penned crowd of sheep, a stout farmer in gaiters was flinging them one by one into the river, they splashed and struggled in vain; a man stood up to his waist in the midst of the stream dowsing the poor gentle creatures one by one, as they swam past. The stream dashed along the narrow gully. The dogs were barking in great excitement. The sheep went in black and came out white and fleecy and flurried, scrambling to land. Young Farmer Rhodes stood watching the process mounted on his beautiful mare; James Brand, with the lurcher in a leash, had also stopped for a moment. He looked up with his kind blue eyes at Dolly as she crossed the bridge, and stood watching the rural scene. The hedges and the river banks were quivering with coming spring, purple buds and green leaves, and life suddenly rising out of silent moors. James Brand came up to where Dolly was standing. He stood silent for an instant, then he spoke in his soft Yorkshire tones: