She knew, she saw, that the old story was not “dead and done for!” There came upon her an awful, formless dread that Guy would never reach Waynflete “safe.” She stood quite still, with her eyes wide open, and one hand holding by the jagged rock beside her. Her soul was alive within her, and wrestled with the angel—whether of light or of darkness, she did not know. She held Guy’s soul with hers as with her hand she might have held his, giving him all her strength, and her spirit stretched and strained as the muscles might have done in a struggle for dear life. There were at first no words within her. It was a shapeless foe; but gradually as she pitted all the force of her soul against it, there came into her the sense, not only of fear and peril, but of evil—images, thoughts, words, flashed into her innocent soul. Hitherto she had had no consciousness of prayer, only of struggle, but now she cried out to the Presence that was with him and her to reinforce her strength. And happily, blessedly, that Presence within her was not without form and void, she dropped on her knees, sobbing out over and over again the prayers of her earliest childhood. For the form that was within her was that of the Son of God.
When Florella came back to the outer world, and felt the wet mist on her face, and the wind blowing through her hair, and pulled at the damp heather with her hand, there was scarcely any daylight left. She could hardly recall at first what had passed within her, nothing remained clear, but a picture in her mind of the Flete beck, and of the woody hollow through which it ran, such a picture as she “saw” when she was going to make a sketch. She felt silly and confused, as if she did not quite know where she was, and as if she had worked herself up into an agony that had no cause or meaning.
Then she thought of Guy Waynflete, and she knew that the unconscious child-heart, with which she had entered that valley, had gone for ever, and that, whatever else she had given him in that mysterious hour, her love had gone out to him beyond recall. Interest, helpfulness, sympathy? These he had in a manner asked for, and in giving them, she had given how much more? She had flung herself out of herself to help him, and behold, she had come back to herself, with yearnings and longings and hopes and fears, that seemed full of selfish passion. The poor angel had fallen out of the sky!
The wet wind stung her hot cheeks with its cold blast. Suddenly she moved, and climbing up the rock, peered anxiously into the bunch of withered harebells, which had once stood up so brave and blue in the heavenly blue around them. There was—yes, there was one little living bud at the tip of a withering stem.
Florella did not pick it or take it to herself. She was going away to-morrow; she would never know if it came into flower. Perhaps she would never know how Guy had reached Waynflete.
She kissed the little bud, and then pulled her cloak straight and went home to supper, shutting up the new burden tight in her breast.
Constancy, meanwhile, was sitting comfortably by the fire, when there was a crack of wheels on the wet gravel, a deep voice outside, an opening door, and Godfrey Waynflete’s tall figure and flaxen head in the doorway.
“Why, this is a surprise!” exclaimed Cosy. “Then there is nothing amiss at Waynflete, though your brother was sent for.”
“Then Guy has been here? I knew it—”
“Not at all. But Mr Staunton has, and your brother telegraphed to him to say that Mrs Waynflete wanted him, and he had to go over.”