She must know absolutely what it was that he and Rachel were doing, and only Rachel could tell her that—And here her feeling about Rachel was compounded of the strangest mixture of anger and suspicion, of tenderness and compassion, of sympathy and hard callous indifference.
"Oh!" Lizzie thought, "why has all this come to me? Why wasn't I allowed just to go on with my life as it was—My life that was so safe and sure and dull?"—
She was conscious, as she sat there, that she was listening for something. She felt, in an odd way, that the day had been a direct continuance of the dream that she had had in the night; all the morning she had been aware that her ears, in spite of herself, had been waiting for some sound, a message, or an arrival.
She sat now in the swiftly darkening room, as though she had been told that someone was coming at such and such an hour and she had heard the clock strike and was listening for the grating of the wheels on the cobbles of the courtyard.
The calm winter's day passed now into a purple twilight—lights were coming in the windows—
She thought she heard a step in the passage and was startled as though someone had been suddenly, unexpectedly within the room.
She opened the window and listened—"Someone—several people—will come down that garden path in a minute—I know they will."
But the air was very cold and she closed the window; even as she did so a clock struck four.
She got up and went to Rachel.