Thomas prepared for re-union and counted the days impatiently; Anne took leave and woke every morning with fear.
“Nothing has happened yet.” She looked round, and, being alone, she repeated it aloud so that the walls might hear it.... Then again she was frightened. “Perhaps to-day ... to-night....”
Then the day came.
A stranger walked with Thomas in the back garden. He trod on the flower beds and turned his head several times towards the house. Anne saw his owl-like face from the staircase window, watched his movements anxiously. He too bargained and depreciated everything. She began to hope: perhaps he would go away like the others, life would remain in its old groove and the day which was to be the last day of all would never come.
The owl-like face began to ascend under the vaults of the staircase and smiled. It looked into the sunshine room. Vainly Anne fled from it; she met it again in the green room.
The stranger, feeling quite at home, leaned now against the writing table with the many drawers and said something to Thomas.
Anne did not understand clearly what was said, but she felt as if a sharp, short blow had struck her brow. Her brain was stunned by it. Thomas’s voice too reached her ear confusedly, but she saw with despairing certitude that his countenance brightened.
When an hour later the banker from Paternoster Street left, the old house was already his.
For days the dull pain behind Anne’s brow did not cease. Everything that happened around her seemed unreal: the sudden departure of the people from the ground floor, the packing up of everything all over the house.
The time for delivery was short. The greatest haste was necessary.