Now once more they were to run the same round of alarms, undergo the love of the place, with perpetual apprehensions of having to leave it: alarms, throbbing suspicions, like those of old travellers through the haunted forest, where whispers have intensity of meaning, and unseeing we are seen, and unaware awaited.
Nataly shook the rolls of her thick brown hair from her forehead; she took strength from a handsome look of resolution in the glass. She could always honestly say, that her courage would not fail him.
Victor tapped at the door; he stepped into the room, wearing his evening white flower over a more open white waistcoat; and she was composed and uninquiring. Their Nesta was heard on the descent of the stairs, with a rattle of Donizetti’s Il segreto to the skylights.
He performed his never-omitted lover’s homage.
Nataly enfolded him in a homely smile. ‘A country-house? We go and see it to-morrow?’
‘And you’ve been pining for a country home, my dear soul.’
‘After the summer six weeks, the house in London does not seem a home to return to.’
‘And next day, Nataly draws five thousand pounds for the first sketch of the furniture.’
‘There is the Creckholt...’ she had a difficulty in saying.
‘Part of it may do. Lakelands requires—but you will see to-morrow.’