“Yes, I forgive you,” he said, gently raising her in his arms, and leading her to the sofa. “Yes, child, I pity you. It is not your fault that we are miserable. It may be better that we should part thus. The future might be still darker for us if we did not so part. Good-bye.”
He bent over her as she sat in a drooping attitude, with her forehead leaning against the end of the sofa, her hand and arm hanging lax and motionless at her side. He laid his hand upon her head as if in blessing, and then left her without another word.
“The future might be still darker if we did not part.” She repeated the sentence slowly, pondering it as if it had been an enigma.
Miss Fausset expressed herself pleased to receive Miss Ransome as long as it might suit Mildred’s convenience to stay in Lewes Crescent.
“Mr. Greswold has acted like a gentleman,” she said, after Mildred had explained that it was her husband’s wish his niece should accompany her abroad. “He is altogether superior to the common run of men. This young lady belongs to the Anglican Church, I conclude?”
“Decidedly.”
“Then she cannot fail to appreciate the services at St. Edmund’s,” said Miss Fausset; and thereupon gave orders that the second-best spare room should be made ready for Miss Ransome.
Pamela arrived before afternoon tea, bringing Box, who was immediately relegated to the care of the maids in the basement, and the information that her uncle had gone back to Romsey viâ Portsmouth, and was likely to arrive at Enderby some time before midnight. Pamela was somewhat embarrassed for the first quarter of an hour, and was evidently afraid of Miss Fausset; but with her usual adaptability she was soon at home in that chilly and colourless drawing-room. She was even reconciled to the banishment of Box, feeling that it was a privilege to have him anywhere in that orderly mansion, and intending to get him clandestinely introduced into her bedroom when the household retired for the night.
She pictured him as pining with grief in his exile, and it would have disillusioned her could she have seen him basking in the glow of the fire in the housekeeper’s room, snapping up pieces of muffin thrown him by Franz, and beaming with intelligence upon the company.