Though none of those about her were aware of it, the mistress of The Chase became henceforth a different woman. It was as though she had suddenly become alive where she had been dead, articulate instead of dumb.
Each night, when the house was plunged in darkness and slumber, Laura would light three candles, and read the words of longing and of love which Oliver had written in between the formal lines of the last letter she had received from him. And then, when a new letter came, she would burn the one that had come before—the one whose contents she had already long known by heart.
And as the spring wore into summer the thing that became, apart from her child, the only real thing in Laura Pavely's life, was her strong, secret link with this man who she knew was coming back to claim her, on whatever terms she chose to exact, as his own. And she fell into a deep, brooding peace—the peace of waiting. She was in no hurry to see Oliver again—indeed, she sometimes had a disturbing dread that his actual presence might destroy that amazing sense of nearness she now felt to him. Unconsciously her own letters to him became more intimate, more self-revealing; she wrote less of Alice, more of herself.
The only uneaseful element in Laura Pavely's life now was Katty Winslow. The two women never met without Katty's making some mention of Godfrey. And once Laura, when walking away with Katty from Freshley Manor, where the two had met unexpectedly, was sharply disturbed by something Katty said.
"I'm told Oliver Tropenell is coming back at or after Christmas. Somehow I always associate him with that awful time we had last January. I think I shall try and be away when he is here—I don't suppose he'll stay long."
Katty spoke with a kind of rather terrible hardness in her voice, fixing her bright eyes on Laura's quivering face.
"Instead of going away as he did, he ought to have stayed and tried to clear up the mystery."
"But the mystery," said Laura in a low voice, "was cleared up, Katty."
But Katty shook her head. "To me the mystery is a greater one than ever," she said decisively.