It was safe in his dressing-case. So another hurried farewell, and a smiling and kissing of hands. “Good-bye, good-bye!” from the cab window; and away it rattled, and William was gone; and the two ladies and old Winnie in the rear, stood silently looking for a minute or so where the carriage had been, and then they turned, with the faded smile of farewell still on their faces, and slowly re-entered old Gilroyd Hall, which all in a moment had grown so lonely.
In the drawing-room they were silent. Violet was looking through the window, but not, I think, taking much note of the view, pretty as it is.
“I’m going away, and everything breaking up, and you must make allowances”—William’s words were in her lonely ears now. A breaking-up had partly come, and a greater was coming. William’s words sounded like a prophecy. “Breaking-up.” Poor Gilroyd! Many a pleasant summer day and winter evening had she known in that serene old place.
Pleasant times, no doubt, were before her—a more splendid home, perhaps. Still memory would always look back regretfully on those early times, and the familiar view of Gilroyd; its mellow pink-tinted brick, and window-panes, flashing in the setting sun, half seen through the stooping branches of the old chestnuts, would rise kindly and quaint before her, better beloved than the new and colder glories that might await her. Had the break-up indeed come? There was a foreboding of change, a presage as of death at her heart. When she looked at Miss Perfect she saw that she had been crying, and it made her heart heavier.
“Remember, he said he’d come to you whenever you write. You can bring him back whenever you please; and really Paris is no distance at all.”
“I don’t know, little Violet, I’m very low. It’s all very true, what you say, but I’ve a misgiving. I’ve looked my last on my fine fellow—my boy. If I did as I am prompted, I think I should follow him to London, just to have one look more.”
“You’re tired, grannie, darling, and you look pale; you must have a little wine.”
“Pooh, child—no—nothing,” said Aunt Dinah, with a flicker of her usual manner; but there was a fatigue and feebleness in her look which Violet did not like.
“Give me my desk, like a darling,” said Miss Perfect; and she wrote a note, pondering a good while over it; and she leaned back, tired, when she had completed it. “I did my duty by him, I hope. I think he does me credit—a handsome fellow! I don’t see anywhere⸺”
There was a pause here, and a kind of groan, and, coming near, Violet Darkwell saw that she had fainted.