“I don’t know. Soon, I hope.”
Quentillian hoped so too. It seemed to him that only Lucilla’s normality could adjust to any sort of balance the mental atmosphere of St. Gwenllian.
Flora gazed at her father.
“Think what it would have been to him to know, now, that David had sinned, even that he contemplated going through the form of marriage, with that poor thing! The world’s standards of honour are not those of my father.”
“Nor yours either,” Quentillian had almost said, but he checked the cheap retort as it rose.
An impulse made him say instead:
“Promise me at least, Flora, that if this becomes too much for you, if it all breaks down, you will let me share it with you. You owe it to me, I think, having let me be partly responsible. Will you promise?”
“You are very good,” said Flora, her mouth quivering for the first time. “But I don’t mean to fail.”
It was evident enough that her whole being was strung up to the accomplishment of her purpose, and that she was incapable of seeing beyond it.
Quentillian, at his own station, parted from Canon Morchard and his daughter with the direst forebodings. Insensibly, he, too, had almost come to feel that anxious preoccupation with the Canon’s peace of mind that exercised the Canon’s daughters.