* * * * *
As for Winnington, when he reached home in the moonlight, instead of going in to join his sister at tea, he paced a garden path till night had fallen. What was this strong insurgent feeling he could neither reason with nor silence? It seemed to have stolen upon him, amid a host of other thoughts and pre-occupations, secretly and insidiously, till there it stood—full-grown—his new phantom self—challenging the old, the normal self, face to face.
Trouble, self-scorn overwhelmed him. Recalling all his promises to himself, all his assurances to Lady Tonbridge, he stood convicted, as the sentry who has shut his eyes and let the invader pass. Monstrous!—that in his position, with this difference of age between them, he should have allowed such ideas to grow and gather head. Beautiful wayward creature!—all the more beguiling, because of the Difficulties that bristled round her. His common sense, his judgment were under no illusions at all about Delia Blanchflower. And yet—
This then was passion!—which must be held down and reasoned down. He would reason it down. She must and should marry a man of her own generation—youth with youth. And, moreover, to give way to these wild desires would be simply to alienate her, to destroy all his own power with her for good.
The ghostly presence of his life came to him. He cried out to her, made appeal to her, in sackcloth and ashes. And then, in some mysterious, heavenly way she was revealed to him afresh; not as an enemy whom he had offended, not as a lover slighted, but as his best and tenderest friend. She closed no gates against the future:—that was for himself to settle, if closed they were to be. She seemed to walk with him, hand in hand, sister with brother—in a deep converse of souls.
Chapter XI
Gertrude Marvell was sitting alone at the Maumsey breakfast-table, in the pale light of a December day. All around her were letters and newspapers, to which she was giving an attention entirely denied to her meal. She opened them one after another, with a frown or a look of satisfaction, classifying them in heaps as she read, and occasionally remembering her coffee or her toast. The parlourmaid waited on her, but knew very well—and resented the knowledge—that Miss Marvell was scarcely aware of her existence, or her presence in the room.
But presently the lady at the table asked—
"Is Miss Blanchflower getting up?"
"She will be down directly, Miss."