Absently she looked out at the trees above and around her; at the innumerable turns of the road. So the great meeting was over! Manisty's reproaches had come and gone! With his full knowledge—at his humble demand—she held his fate in her hands.
Again that extraordinary sense of happiness and lightness! She shrank from it in a kind of terror.
Once, as the horses turned corner after corner, the sentence of a meditative Frenchman crossed her mind; words which said that the only satisfaction for man lies in being dans l'ordre; in unity, that is, with the great world-machine in which he finds himself; fighting with it, not against it.
Her mind played about this thought; then returned to Manisty and Lucy.
A new and humbled Manisty!—shaken with a supreme longing and fear which seemed to have driven out for the moment all the other elements in his character—those baser, vainer, weaker elements that she knew so well. The change in him was a measure of the smallness of her own past influence upon him; of the infinitude of her own self-deception. Her sharp intelligence drew the inference at once, and bade her pride accept it.
They had reached the last stretch of hill before the convent. Where was
Lucy? She looked out eagerly.
The girl stood at the edge of the road, waiting. As Eleanor bent forward with a nervous 'Dear, I am not tired—wasn't it lovely to find this carriage?' Lucy made no reply. Her face was stern; her eyes red. She helped Eleanor to alight without a word.
But when they had reached Eleanor's cool and shaded room, and Eleanor was lying on her bed physically at rest, Lucy stood beside her with a quivering face.
'Did you tell him to go at once? Of course you have seen him?'
'Yes, I have seen him. Father Benecke gave me notice.'