They were silent for a little; Sylvester was now perfectly composed: his own agitation seemed to have communicated itself to the girl, whom he watched intently, with his bland, impartial gaze. She had closed her eyes, was resting her chin on her bouquet, and appeared to be deeply meditating his words. She looked up at last with a little shiver.
"I am very tired," she said. "If I promise to think over what you have said to-night and to give you my answer in a month's time, will you try and find Lady Garnett for me now?"
"Ah, Miss Masters—Mary!" he said, "that is all I want."
"And in the meantime," she pursued gently, "to allow the subject to drop?"
"You must make your own terms," he said; "but surely I may come and see you?"
"Very well," she consented, after a moment; "if it gives you any pleasure, you may come."
At which Charles simply took her cold, irresponsive hand in his own, with a silent pressure. Irresponsive as it was, however, he reminded himself, she had made no effective protest against the gesture.
CHAPTER XXVIII
At Lady Day, when the negotiations for the sale of his unprofitable riverside domain were finally concluded, Rainham scarcely regretted to find that an ample margin had been left before the new company took possession; and he had still several months, during which he might remain in occupation of his old habitation, and arrange leisurely for the subsequent disposition of his books and more intimate personal chattels. The dilapidated old house was to be pulled down by the new owners (the plans for an extensive warehouse, to be erected on the site of it, were already in the hands of the builders), and this also was a fact from which Rainham derived a certain satisfaction.
Insensibly, the spot had discovered a charm for him: the few rooms, which had been his for so long, although, actually, so small a proportion of his days had been spent in them, had gradually taken the impress of his personality—the faded carpets, the familiar grouping of pictures and books, the very shape of the apartment, and the discoloured paper on the walls, expressed him in a way that certainly no other abiding place, which might conceivably await him, could ever do. And he took a dreary pleasure in the consideration that, after he had gone, the rooms would know no other occupant; that from the glazed and barred windows of the dreary building, which was to take the place of the quaint old house, when it was levelled to the ground, no person would ever gaze out, exactly as he had done, at the white and melancholy river; in which, as he said to himself fantastically, he had cast, one by one, as the days lengthened, his interests, his passions, his desires.