Now a broad streak of clear, cold light had been cast upon the situation, and in this light he saw how poor and feeble had been his hope. It was all very well, however, to make resolutions and to contract with himself to set aside all thought of Polly and his love for her. In these matters mind is not everything, and nature is too strong voiced to be silenced at will.
Valentine went about his business just as he would have done had Christina refrained from telling him that pitiful little story; but though he walked, and spoke, and wrote, and eventually traveled down to Dynechester just as he usually walked and spoke and traveled, he was conscious, actually conscious, of a great difference in himself, and he looked ahead at his future half nervously, for this was his first actual consciousness of the power of heart over mind, and he hardly knew how the future was to be faced with this dull, aching pain clamoring to be healed and never healing.
“Time, I suppose,” he said to himself, wearily, “time will put things right again.”
But he had no faith even in time.
Life in its simplest aspects had changed to Valentine when he had told himself in quiet, measured terms, that his love for this woman, the first, the only love he had ever known, must be taken out of its setting and destroyed.
He was glad to be obliged to go to Dynechester; he escaped contact with Sacha, who annoyed him more than he could describe, since they had been thrown so much together; he was even glad not to see Grace before he went, although he would like to have heard from his sister some news of Polly, and if all were well with the girl.
This sudden departure, this quitting of her mother, all served to bear testimony to the truth of what Christina had told him, for it was so unlike Polly to permit herself to be separated from her mother; it must, therefore, have been some very strong motive that had urged her departure.
Grace was absent when her eldest brother ran into their temporary home, and, picking up his bag, took himself off to the station en route for Dynechester. She was, therefore, unable to enlighten him, as she was in a full position to do, on all touching Polly.
Grace had managed everything.
She had telegraphed to her old servant, and had received a reply, saying there was room and over for any friend of Miss Ambleton’s.