CHAPTER VII.
‘AN ENEMY HATH DONE THIS.’
The postman did not call at all the following morning, and Sara, she scarcely knew why, felt sick at heart. What a martyrdom those four or five postal deliveries per diem of a great town may and do inflict upon some of those who are eagerly waiting for something to come, and it never appears. The postman goes past, or calls, with terrible regularity. Scarcely has one bitter disappointment been tided over, than one sees him again, with the bundle of letters in his left hand, passing along the street, or running up the steps. There is the sharp fall of a letter in the box, the sickening interval before the servant comes in with the salver, and on it a circular, an invitation, a bill—never the thing one is longing for so desperately. Under the circumstances, give us rather by all means the one delivery during the day of the dark and barbarous village which is five miles from everywhere. There one is at least secure of an interval of twenty-four hours between each ordeal.
Dinner, their midday dinner, was over; and the afternoon was advancing. Sara could not paint; so, saying she had a headache, she did not enter her studio, but remained in the other room with a book. Ellen and Avice were both in the atelier. Ellen with her sewing, which she usually took there when her mistress was not painting, and sometimes when she was. Avice was painting. She had a very pretty talent for making water-colour drawings; and Wilhelmi, out of his regard for Sara, had given her a few hints on different occasions, by which she had not failed to profit.
Thus Sara had her book, her parlour, and her thoughts to herself, and felt the monopoly to be of anything but an exhilarating character. She scarce saw the printed page; she was so engrossed in her wonder as to what had really been in Jerome’s mind when he wrote her that letter, and by the bitter sense of indignity she experienced in the utter silence of to-day. Not a line; not a word from him. It was amazing—incomprehensible! She had not answered the letter. She was wondering whether she should do so, whether she should wait another day; in the hope of hearing from him that he had been hasty, ill-advised; that he had decided not to let his sister return with Father Somerville.
Then some one knocked at the door, and in answer to her Herein! Rudolf Falkenberg entered.
‘Send me away if I disturb you,’ he said, pausing, and looking rather doubtfully at her.
‘Not in the least. Pray come in, Herr Falkenberg, and try to instil some of your wisdom into me, for I am a very foolish person.’
‘As how?’ he asked, taking a chair near her, when she had given him her hand; ‘and what has happened, that I find you sitting here in the middle of the afternoon, like——’