“Why bother your head about the woman?” he had said, almost impatiently, when she had asked his advice. “Put the letter in the fire.”
“It looks so rude, Val, to leave it unanswered, doesn’t it?”
Valentine shrugged his shoulders.
“Lady Wentworth has her own share of rudeness. She must be treated occasionally as she treats other people. Besides, her writing to you is all a farce. If she really cared two pins about her mother, or had any grief at that poor lad’s death, she would not have waited and have sent letters asking to be told what to do. She would have acted without any delay or inquiry. Leave the letter unanswered,” Valentine said, a second time, and Grace obeyed him.
She gave little thought to Christina, while poor Mrs. Pennington and Polly were still under her roof, but when they were gone, escorted up to their big, desolate, sorrowful home by Valentine, Grace had time to remember Christina and to ponder on her anew.
Her late close intercourse with Polly only served to make the question of Christina a more difficult one to grasp, yet Grace could not set aside the thought that if one sister could be so unselfish and so sympathetic, another might have her share of such qualities even if in a very minor degree.
Grace recommenced her daily journeys up to Sunstead when her house was empty.
She timed these visits to escape all chance of meeting Mark’s wife, and she never saw Christina, but she frequently saw Mark, and gradually it became Sir Mark’s custom to meet his cousin as she came down from his grandmother’s room and exchange a greeting with her.
Grace could not but be pleased at this show of friendliness, and her womanly heart yearned over the young man who was drifting so palpably into premature age, and ill health, simply through his weakness.
They spoke of nothing confidential in these moments, but they both found a pleasure in merely seeing one another as though nothing had happened to make a breach between them.