Yet Anne had not abandoned her plan; it was only that the spring and the garden full of growing things had claimed her attention. But one morning she found a letter for her on the breakfast table, and as she opened it her heart sank, for she guessed that it was from a lady anxious to engage her as a companion.
“What am I to say to him?” she asked herself, looking up at her father as he came into the room, and the morning was spent wandering about the house, first carrying an old trunk out of the box-room to pack her things, and then with pale cheeks running to the door of her father’s study. She did not knock, when she stood trembling outside the door, though she knew that in a day or two at most, perhaps even in a few hours, she would be leaving the vicarage.
During luncheon she came nearest to speaking to her father, but each time, just as she was going to begin, she was interrupted by some remark of his. Such a subject could not be opened without preparation, when her father spoke of the decoration of the church at Easter her courage failed her, and before she had recovered it, he had shaken the crumbs off his waistcoat and had gone into his study.
“I shall have to leave a letter for him to read after I am gone,” said Anne, but the idea was hateful to her; it revealed her own cowardice too clearly, and when she began to compose the letter that should be left behind, she found the task an impossible one.
“A walk will help me to think things out,” but in the road her footsteps turned of themselves across the green, and she was half-way to the Burnt Farm before she stopped suddenly, realizing that she was going there to lay her difficulties before the grocer’s son.
“That will be the best way,” she said aloud. “In such a position as mine, one must seek advice, for it is only when one has been advised by someone else that one recovers confidence in the sanity of one’s own opinions.”
Directly she had passed through the iron gates the sunshine seemed warmer; it was as hot as June; she could see the daffodils clustering on the banks of the pond and reflected in its waters; a brimstone butterfly rose from the flagged pathway and rambled in front of her, settling at last on one of the brick walls.
There was a continuous cooing from the top of the dove house, and the beat of the wings of the pigeons coming and going; a blackbird was singing in the tangled orchard.
Rachel Sotheby was nowhere to be seen; there was no fire burning, but recollecting that Richard Sotheby would be painting on the other side of the house, Anne walked round into the wild garden. She could not see him, and soon sat down, putting her arms up to tidy her hair, loosened by an angry toss of her head, for she was vexed to have come looking for the young man.
“Please stay like that,” said a sharp voice behind her, and she looked round to find Richard Sotheby watching her from inside the ruined walls.