“Nothing, it seems,” answered Florella, in sombre tones.
“Well, what could I do? I should be very wrong to encourage him, and he would take it as encouragement if I went down with him into such a Slough of Despond!”
“Did you really want him to think that what he did was of no consequence? I wonder if you have succeeded.”
“I don’t mean to have anything to do with him,” said Constancy, resolutely.
But she knew in her secret soul that she had been a coward.
She went back to college, to all the engrossing interests of college life, and Florella returned with her aunt to London, for a winter to be spent partly in the ordinary duties and pleasures of a young lady at home, and partly in the steady and careful study of her art.
For what was she to Guy Waynflete but a blight acquaintance, a girl who had met him a few times, and with whom his intercourse had been so slight as hardly to raise a remark.
That was strange, when all the force her spirit could transmit went into her promised prayers for him, and, when to such entire ignorance of what had outwardly happened, she united that inner sense of living with him through all. The contrast made her shy of mentioning his name; but when some few days after her return to town, she went over one afternoon to the Stauntons, it was with the hope of hearing something about him. She was told that Miss Staunton would be in directly, if she liked to go upstairs and wait for her, and she went up into the pleasant shabby drawing-room. Some one was lying back in a low easy-chair by the fire, and Florella knew in a moment that it was Guy himself.
He sat up and looked at her with an eager, half-doubtful, half-delighted look, but though her heart gave a great throb, she came forward holding out her hand, and speaking in her soft, composed voice.
“Mr Waynflete! Please don’t get up. I hope you are better.”