“Tony,” she said, “be patient. I can’t make what I feel quite plain, but we must wait.”
“Well,” said Tony with a sigh, “I will try to do without you until your mother thinks a fitting time has come.”
“Then, if nothing very dreadful happens in the meanwhile, I will be ready.”
Tony flicked the horse until it endeavored to break into a gallop, and then viciously tightened his grip on the reins.
“You put it curiously,” he said. “What could happen?”
“I don’t know,” said the girl. “Perhaps what took place so unexpectedly a few days ago has shaken me, for I feel vaguely apprehensive just now. I know of no reason why this should be, but we are all a prey to fancies now and then.”
Tony looked down on her compassionately. “The last few days at Northrop have been too much for you—and I was a selfish brute for not sending you home,” he said.
Violet made no answer, and there was silence between them while the dog-cart splashed on down the muddy road.
It was some weeks later when one afternoon Violet Wayne, who had undertaken the embroidery of an altar cloth, entered Northrop church. It was little and old and shadowy, but the colored lights of the high west window drove a track of brilliancy through its quiet duskiness. Nobody knew the exact history of Northrop church, but it had evidently once been larger than it was then, for the spacious chancel with its carved stalls and rood screen bore no proportion to the contracted nave. Violet entered it softly, with eyes still partly dazzled by the contrast with the sunlit meadows she had crossed, and then stopped in faint astonishment as she saw a girl of her own age standing in evident admiration before an effigy on a tomb. It had been hewn in marble by an unknown sculptor centuries ago, but there was a rude grandeur in his conception, and the chivalric spirit of bygone ages seemed living in the stone.
The girl who stood before it started visibly when Violet walked up the aisle. She was slight and spare, with vivacious blue eyes and fluffy brown hair.