“Really, Eva, I don’t know what has come to you lately, why don’t you go along the cliff, or stop—have you been to the post-office? I called for the Dum’s Ness letters, and Mr. Brown said that there was one for you.”
Eva jumped up with remarkable animation, and passed out of the room with her peculiar light tread. The mention of that word “letter” had sufficed to change the aspect of things considerably.
Florence watched her go with a dark little smile.
“Ah,” she said aloud, as the door closed, “your feet will soon fall heavily enough.”
Presently Eva went out, and Florence, having thrown off her cloak, took her sister’s place at the window and waited. It was seven minutes’ walk to the post-office. She would be back in about a quarter of an hour. Watch in hand, Florence waited patiently. Seventeen minutes had elapsed when the garden-gate was opened, and Eva re-entered, her face quite gray with pain, and furtively applying a handkerchief to her eyes. Florence smiled again.
“I thought so,” she said.
From all of which it will be seen that Florence was a very remarkable woman. She had scarcely exaggerated when she said that her heart was as deep as the sea. The love that she bore Ernest was the strongest thing in all her strong and vigorous life; when every other characteristic and influence crumbled away and was forgotten, it would still remain overmastering as ever. And when she discovered that her high love, the greatest and best part of her, had been made a plaything of by a thoughtless boy, who kissed girls on the same principle that a duck takes to water, because it came natural to him, the love in its mortal agonies gave birth to a hate destined to grow great as itself. But, with all a woman’s injustice, it was not directed towards the same object. On Ernest, indeed, she would wreak vengeance if she could, but she still loved him as dearly as at first; the revenge would be a mere episode in the history of her passion. But to her sister, the innocent woman who, she chose to consider, had robbed her, she gave all that bountiful hate. Herself the more powerful character of the two, she determined upon the utter destruction of the weaker. Strong as Fate, and unrelenting as Time, she dedicated her life to that end. Everything, she said, comes to those who can wait. She forgot that the Providence above us can wait the longest of us all. In the end it is Providence that wins.
Eva came in, and Florence heard her make her way up the stairs to her room. Again she spoke to herself:
“The poor fool will weep over him and renounce him. If she had the courage she would follow him and comfort him in his trouble, and so tie him to her for ever. Oh, that I had her chance! But the chances always come to fools.”
Then she went upstairs and listened outside Eva’s door. She was sobbing audibly. Turning the handle, she walked casually in.