"That'll be for the master," Bessie said. "No, it's for you, Miss Terry. Now, drink the milk. I won't have people telling me you're thin. Of course, you're thin! You tell 'im I've given you hot milk every morning this last week."
"All right, Bessie, all right. He knows you take care of me."
"So 'e ought."
She had held the letter in her pocket, stroking it with her thumb; and then Grace and the baby had come in to say good-bye, and not until she was in the train had she been able to read what Alexander wrote. Then she read it many times. "Will you not be here to see it flush the hills? And the streams so fierce and heavy that it takes your breath away." She wanted to be there. She thought she felt the cold spray on her face. She felt the air: passing through it was to be new-made. Her steps were buoyant, her eyes were washed and clean. She heard the water, she heard the larches singing, and her heart cried in her breast. She would dream to-night, and she longed for the darkness and feared it. She would see the lakeside and the black precipice, the water would be whispering at her feet, and she would be waiting, waiting. It was a long time since she had been there.
But Alexander's letter roused her to more than this sickness of longing that she dared not analyse too closely. "I've been waiting for that book of yours," he said. There would never be a book. And he was looking for it. She was hurt and shamed as by a promise broken to a child. Talking freely on that wonderful one day of theirs, she had told him what she meant to do, and he had given her that plunging look of response. How had she dared to talk like that, and then do nothing? She knew the answer. And now it was too late. She was to be a county lady. She had come to an age when she was no longer sure that she had the power she had always wanted; but she ought to have put it to the test, for she had told Alexander what she was going to do; she had told Alexander. The words came with such force that her lips framed them. She had told Alexander. She had another tale for him now. "Oh yes," she said, "you shall have a letter," and she quickly wrote it, sitting there with the firelight on her bare arms and her quick, thin hands.
"Dear Alexander,
"Thank you for your letter. It was like seeing the place. I didn't begin the book. I lost faith, and I'll never get it back. I'm weak, but perhaps it is a good thing and has saved the spilling of much ink. It was a young ambition of mine, and you know what Father is! So I'm going to be married instead, for that's a profession we all think we are fit for! I shall see you at Easter. It will be two years then.
"Theresa."
She felt like a penitent who has relieved her soul of sin and planted a dart in the breast of her confessor.
[CHAPTER XXIV]
As Theresa entered the drawing-room on the following afternoon, she felt the imminence of ceremony. Mrs. Morton had cast aside her crotchet and sat, in satin and old lace, awaiting the coming of her guests; and the room, softly and rosily shaded, seemed to Theresa like a temple raised to the social cult, with the tea-table for altar and Mrs. Morton for ministrant.