Old Wilson drove on. Laura climbed a stile and slipped down to the waterside.
The river, full with autumn rain, came foaming down. The leaf was falling fast. Through the woods on the further bank she could just distinguish a gable of the old house.
A moan broke from her. She stooped and buried her face in the grass—his grass.
When she returned to the road, she looked for the letter-box in the wall of the bridge, and, walking up to it, she dropped into it two letters. Then she stood a moment with bent brows. Had she made all arrangements for Augustina?
But she dared not let herself think of the morrow. She set her face to the hill—trudging steadily up the wet, solitary road. Once—twice—she turned to look. Then the high trees that arched over the top of the hill received the little form; she disappeared into their shadow.
BOOK V
CHAPTER I
"My dear, where are the girls?"
The speaker was Dr. Friedland, the only intimate friend Stephen Fountain had ever made at Cambridge. The person addressed was Dr. Friedland's wife.
On hearing her husband's question, that lady's gentle and benevolent countenance emerged from the folds of a newspaper. It was the "first mild day of March," and she and her husband had been enjoying an after-breakfast chat in the garden of a Cambridge villa.