She sat for a long time at her open window, breathing the sweet scents of that May night, and feeling better satisfied with the world than she had felt since she had last sat at that window, trying to realize the idea that the man who held her in bondage was dead. At that time all her thoughts had been of the past; but now they were all of the future. The idea of a sincere and far-reaching friendship with a man was very pleasing to her. It took away from her the sense of isolation. She recalled many cases of which she had read of the admirable operation of a true friendship between a man and a woman, and why might it not be possible, after all, for her to help the man of whom she was thinking in some way by which his interests in the world might be appreciably advanced?
The thought of this possibility was much more agreeable to her amour propre than any thought of the possibility of his loving her would have been upon this particular night.
And all the joy of the silver summer night was about her as she sat there. Her own garden was just beneath her window, and in its borders the groups of old-fashioned spring flowers could be dimly seen through the silver-shot air. From the meadow at the foot of the Downs came the barking of a dog, and the sound was faintly answered from the shepherd’s hut higher up. There was the occasional lowing of one of the herd of Jerseys, only a short time sent out to the grass and not yet used to the change. Every now and again a bat flapped between her face and the sheen of the sky, and gave her the impression of the hand of some ghostly figure making a grasp at something close to her. At rarer intervals a still more spectral thing swooped by, and its passage was followed by the squeal of a rat, and later by a “tu-whit-tu-whoo” of the barn owl.
She leant out of the window so that she could see the dark, many-folded cloud spreading itself abroad halfway across the valley through which the Wadron wandered. That cloud represented the trees of Overdean Manor. The Manor House was hidden by the summer boskage of the Park, so that she saw nothing of it—not even a light in one of the windows.
She drew back into her room and, after another interval of thought, unfastened the clasps of her clothes and let them slip down to her feet; she had already loosened the coils of her hair, and now, by a shake of her head, her white shoulders and the exquisite full curves of roseate flesh were deluged with a thousand little cascades flowing and overflowing with the unevenness of a torrent on which a fitful moon is shining. She began her task of brushing, and went on with it for five minutes until her arms began to ache. Then she wove her plaits, and in crossing the room to get her nightdress she caught a glimpse of her figure passing the tall looking-glass. The glimpse did not interest her in the least. She did not cast a second glance at the glass. She slipped her nightdress over her head, blew out her candles, and went into bed.
No, she was not in the least in love with the man of whom she had been thinking.
CHAPTER X
The news that young Mr. Wingfield had come not only into possession of the property which he had inherited, after the interval made compulsory by the will, but into residence at the Manor House as well, did not take long to spread round Framsby. Framsby was ready to receive him to her great motherly heart. The fact of his being a prodigal did not interfere in the least with the warmth of the maternal embrace which Framsby was preparing for him; nay, it actually increased the enthusiasm with which the sentiment of his coming was hailed. Is it not well known that the prodigal son is the nearest to the mother’s heart of all her family?