“Very much obliged—I’ll certainly turn up, you know, seven o’clock some evening.”
And so he took his leave, and was haunted day and night by Violet Darkwell’s beautiful downcast face, as he had seen it that morning.
“I knew I’d make her like me—by Jove, I knew I should—she does, I’m quite sure of it, she’s beginning to like me, and if I choose I’ll make her like me awfully.”
Now, all the rest of that day, Trevor thought a great deal less than he had ever done before, of the pomps and vanities of Revington, and the vain glories of the Trevors of that ilk. Wrestling with love is sometimes like wrestling with an angel, and when the struggle seems well nigh over, and the athlete sure of his victory, one unexpected touch of the angelic hand sets him limping again for many a day. Little did he fancy that the chance meeting in the shadowy porch of Saxton Church would rivet again the sightless chains which it had taken some time and trouble to unclasp, and send him maundering and spiritless in his fetters among the woods and lonely paths of Revington; not yet, indeed, bewailing in vain his captivity, but still conscious of the invisible influence in which he was again entangled, and with no very clear analysis of the present, or thoughts for the future.
Time had brought no tidings of William Maubray, and, except on occasions, Aunt Dinah’s fits of silence were growing longer, and her old face more wan and sad.
“Ungrateful creature!” said she, unconsciously aloud.
“Who, Ma’am?” asked old Winnie, mildly. Her mistress was disrobing for bed.
“Eh, who?” repeated Miss Perfect. “My nephew William Maubray, to think of his never once sending me a line, or a message!—we might all be dead here and he never know. Not that I care for his indifference and heartless ingratitude, for as I told you before, I shall never see his face again. You need not stare, you need not say a word, Winnie; it is quite fixed. You may go to see him at Cambridge if he’s there, or wherever he is, but the door of Gilroyd he shall never enter more while I live, and he and his concerns shall trouble me just as little as I and mine do him.”
It was about this time that William Maubray, who was permitted regularly to look into the Times, saw the following notification among its advertisements:—
“If the young gentleman who abruptly left his old relative’s house, under displeasure, on the night of ⸺, is willing to enter the Church, a path to reconciliation may be opened; but none otherwise. If he needs pecuniary assistance it will be supplied to the extent of £50, on his applying through his tutor, Doctor S⸺, but not directly.”