She had filled in her postal order and had sealed up her letter; there was no reason to stay longer listening while Mrs. Day repeated the letters after him, and she went out, posted her letter, and turned homewards. Already her emotions about her advertisement had subsided, and as she hurried under the storm-tossed elms her thoughts were occupied with the grocer’s son and his strange telegram.
“Je suis las de tes amourettes et de mon amour. Je consens. Ecris.” What did that mean? And who was the Grandison to whom it was addressed?
Her meditations were interrupted by Richard Sotheby himself, who passed her, walking rapidly down the avenue. His hat was jammed hard on his head: he did not lift it, and directly he had passed she noticed that he was wearing button boots made of patent leather.
SEVEN: THE BURNT FARM
The March gale continued for several days; the daffodils were broken, the hyacinths in the border laid low, but one morning Anne awoke to find that not a breath of wind was stirring in the elms, and after an hour or so the sun was blazing with the heat of June. On the breakfast table lay The Church Times, and she trembled with emotion when she saw it in her father’s hands.
“I must speak to him,” she said to herself, “I must speak to him now,” but she did not speak, consoling herself for her lack of resolution with the thought that the earliest answers to her advertisement could not arrive for two days, since they were to be forwarded from the office in Fleet Street; she had not given her name and address, but had used a box number.
“I will speak to him to-morrow,” she said to herself. “For I would like to enjoy one day of perfect spring weather before I leave Dry Coulter, and our conversation is certain to upset us.”
She waited eagerly until the birds’ breakfast left her free to take the newspaper into her hands. Her advertisement was in, and reading the modest three lines Anne felt her heart swell with the triumph of authorship, and she ran upstairs with The Church Times in her hand to read the announcement over and over to herself in private.
“There is no turning back now!” she exclaimed. “I have shown my independence; I have taken the first step, and nothing now can keep me from achieving my purpose.”
Anne’s eyes flashed as she turned to the looking-glass; and the eager look she met there intoxicated her: at that moment she almost suffocated with the sense of her own power. The blood rushed to her head, and she clenched her fists, and ground her teeth in the effort to remain calm.