'Come,' said I, 'you had better go upstairs and rest a little while—before you start, you know.'
She looked up at me in a dreamy bewildered manner as she leant, supported by my arms, against the staircase, and two tears, shining in the darkness, rolled down her cheeks. 'I am afraid,' said she in a broken whisper, 'that I shall not be able to go at all.'
Then, with a long sigh, she stood up, twined her arms within mine and let me lead her upstairs. The door of her room was open, and the two candles, flickering and smoking in the draught, cast moving shadows over a disorder of dress and dainty woman's clothing flung in confusion about the room. Babiole glanced inside and then looked up at me in bewilderment and alarm, like one roused out of sleep to see something strange and terrible. I wanted her to go to rest before her memory should overtake her. So I took off her bonnet and cloak, and profiting by the utter docility she showed me, glanced into the room and said, in a tone of authority, such as one would use to a child—
'Now, I shall come upstairs again in exactly five minutes and shall knock at your door. If you are in bed by that time you are to call out "good-night." If you are not, I shall wake your mother up, and send her to you. Now will you do as I tell you?'
'Yes, yes,' said she meekly.
'Then good-night.'
'Good-night, Mr. Maude.'
She knew me then; but I somehow fancied, from the old-fashioned demureness with which she gave her hand, that she believed herself to be once more the little maid of Craigendarroch, and me to be her old master.
Next day Babiole did not appear at breakfast, and her mother said she was in a state of deep depression, and must, her mother thought by her manner, have had a fright in the night. I was very anxious to see her again, and to find out how much she remembered of our nocturnal adventure. So anxious was I, in fact, that I forgot all about my appointment at Oak Lodge at eleven, and it was not until Mrs. Ellmer and I were having luncheon at two that I was suddenly reminded of my neglect in a rather summary fashion by being presented by Ferguson with a note directed in my fiancée's handwriting, and told that a messenger was waiting. I opened it, conscience-stricken, but hardly prepared for the blow it contained. This was the note:—
Dear Mr. Maude—[The opening was portentous] It is with feelings of acute pain that I address thus formally a gentleman in whom I once thought I had had the good fortune to discover a heart, and more especially a mind, to which I could in all things submit the control of my own weaker and more frivolous nature.' [Lucy Farington frivolous! Shades of Aristotle and Bacon!] 'For some time past I have begun to feel that I was deceived. I do not for a moment mean that you intended deception, but that, in my anxiety to believe the best, I deceived myself. Your growing indifference to the dearest wishes of my heart, culminating in your positive non-appearance this morning (when I had prepared a little surprise for you in shape of a meeting with Mr. Finch, the architect, with his designs for a model self-supporting village laundry), leave hardly any room for doubt that our views of life are too hopelessly dissimilar for us to hope to embark happily in matrimony. If this is indeed the case, with much regret I will give you back your liberty, and request the return of my perhaps foolishly fond letters. If, on the other hand, you are not willing that all should be at an end between us, I beg that you will come to me in the pony carriage which will await your orders.—I remain, dear Mr. Maude, with my sincerest apologies if I have been unduly hasty, yours most sincerely,
Lucy Farington.