'Would you rather I did not tell her at all? But if I have to go?'
'Yes then—then you must.'
An instant—and she added hastily in a voice that wavered,' I am so very, very sorry—'
'Thank you. She often asks about you.'
He spoke with a formal courtesy, in his 'grand manner.' Her gleam of feeling had made him sensible, of advantage, given him back self-confidence.
The soft flutter of her dress disappeared, and he was left to pace up and down the loggia in alternations of hope and despair. He, too, felt with Eleanor that these days were fatal. If he lost her now, he lost her for ever. She was of those natures in which a scruple only deepens with time.
She would not take what should have been Eleanor's. There was the case in a nutshell. And how insist in these circumstances, as he would have done vehemently in any other, that Eleanor had no lawful grievance?
He felt himself bound and pricked by a thousand delicate lilliputian bonds. The 'regiment of women' was complete. He could do nothing. Only Eleanor could help.
* * * * *
The following day, just outside the convent gate, he met Lucy, returning from the village, whither she had been in quest of some fresh figs for Eleanor's breakfast. It was barely eight o'clock, but the sun was already fierce. After their formal greeting, Lucy lingered a moment.