Great was Eanswyth’s consternation and astonishment when he announced the necessity of making a start that afternoon.
“The time will soon pass,” he said. “It is a horrible nuisance, darling, but there is no help for it. The thing is too important. The fact is, something has come to light—something which may settle that delayed administration business at once.”
It might, indeed, but in a way very different to that which he intended to convey. But she was satisfied.
“Do not remain away from me a moment longer than you can help, Eustace, my life!” she had whispered to him during the last farewell, she having walked a few hundred yards with him in order to see the last of him. “Remember, I shall only exist—not live—during these next few days. This is the first time you have been away from me since—since that awful time.”
Then had come the sweet, clinging, agonising tenderness of parting. Eanswyth, having watched him out of sight, returned slowly to the house, while he, starting upon his strange venture, was thinking in the bitterness of his soul how—when—they would meet again. His heart was heavy with a sense of coming evil, and as he rode along his thoughts would recur again and again to the apparition which had so terrified Eanswyth a few nights ago. Was it the product of a hallucination on her part after all, or was it the manifestation of some strange and dual phase of Nature, warning of the ill that was to come? He felt almost inclined to admit the latter.