The suggestion nevertheless did not find favour with her. She felt restless and uneasy. She dreaded the impending talk with Trevor; she was afraid of making him angry by her refusal to agree to an immediate marriage, though in this refusal she felt herself perfectly justified. A slight consciousness of not having been treated by Mr. Fawcett of late, with quite his usual delicacy and consideration added to her depression and annoyance.
“I don’t think Trevor should have talked about it to any one till we had talked it over together,” she thought. “It cannot have been altogether my father’s doing. However anxious he may be for the marriage, he would not have startled me by proposing that it should be so very soon. Next month! Trevor must have let papa think that he and I had talked about it, and that was not kind or considerate. For it was always understood we were not to be married for a long time—and lately, since Charlie died, I was glad to put the leaving home as far back in my thoughts as possible. And Trevor understands all I feel, so well or, at least, he used to do.”
It was nearly midnight—a midnight, as Cicely had foretold, nearly as bright as day, for the moon was at the full and the sky was cloudless. Cicely was restless and excited; she had dismissed her maid at the beginning of her conversation with her mother, now she felt disinclined to go to bed, and sat by the still open window looking out into the garden. The breeze had fallen, every object shone out in silvery white distinctness against the black shadows, all the shades and colours of the daylight world merged in the one sharp contrast. A silly fancy crossed Cicely’s brain.
“I wonder,” she thought, “if there are any worlds where there is no stronger light than this. How tired we should get of the everlasting blacks and whites—it would be like living in an engraving!”
She leant her arms on the broad, low window-sill and gazed before her. Away down to the right ran the path across the park leading to the plantations, beyond which again lay the entrance to the long extent of the Lingthurst woods. This was Trevor’s short cut to the Abbey. How often Cicely had watched him coming over the park; how many a time she had run to unlock the little door in the wall, to save him the additional half-mile of road round by the lodge! Many an old remembrance stole across her mind as she sat looking out on the familiar scene in its moonlight dress. Suddenly a small object moving in the distance caught her attention; a figure was hastening over the park in the direction of the Abbey—a small dark figure running, as Cicely could perceive as it drew nearer, at full speed. Who could it be? Twelve o’clock had struck since the girl had taken up her station at the window—a strange hour for a child (for such the figure seemed to be) to be out alone in the great bare expanse of the park, which no one had occasion to cross except visitors to the Abbey. Only one conjecture occurred to Cicely as a possible explanation of what she saw—some cottager’s child must be ill, and in distress and alarm the parents must be sending for assistance to some of the outdoor servants belonging to the house. So Cicely remained at the window watching the gradually approaching figure with some curiosity. It drew nearer and nearer, somewhat diminishing its pace as it came on, till at last the run sobered down into a swift walk. By this time Cicely could distinguish that the strange visitor was not a child, as she had imagined, but a small woman in a long, dark cloak. She kept her eyes fixed upon it with increasing curiosity, not unmixed with a slight flavour of eeriness—was it a real flesh-and-blood woman she was observing, or the restless spirit of some black-veiled sister revisiting at this unearthly hour the haunts which had known her in the flesh? Cicely shivered involuntarily as the idea occurred to her; then she smiled at her own folly, and watched to see the small black figure disappear among the premises at the back of the house. For a minute or two she lost sight of it. “If she is going to the coach man’s house, she will set the dogs barking,” thought the watcher, with some anxiety as to the possible disturbance of her father’s rest. But no dogs began to bark, and in another moment the little figure reappeared again, out of the deep shadow of a projecting wall which had hidden it from view; and then, to Cicely’s amazement, it came on along the front of the house and turned round a corner, evidently making for the terrace-garden, on to which opened the low window-doors of the library. Half mechanically, hardly knowing what she was doing, holding her breath, nevertheless, in instinctive anxiety, Cicely rose from her seat by the window and went to the door, still standing slightly ajar. She stood there, intently listening for any sound from below, for the library was almost immediately underneath her room. She was not frightened, she was only vaguely excited and uneasy what she expected or dreaded she could hardly have put into words.
It came at last—the familiar sound, that till she heard it she hardly knew her ears had been expecting—the slight click of the latch of the library glass door opened by some one from the outside. Then the cautious closing inside, the drawing to of the shutters, the adjusting of the bar—then a pause, as if the intruder were stopping to rest for an instant; and then again faint sounds distinguishable in the intense silence of the house, which told of some one’s moving across the library and entering the corridor leading to the stairs. Cicely no longer hesitated; she flew along the passage and reached the head of the staircase just as the small dark figure began wearily to ascend. Miss Methvyn stood still in the shadow, but as the person she was waiting for arrived at the top, she came forward in the moonlight.
“It is I, Geneviève,” she said at once, speaking clearly, though softly. “Don’t scream, or you will waken the house. Come here—come with me into my room and tell me what in the world is the matter. Where have you been?”
She spoke with a certain authority; she drew her cousin along the passage to the room she had just left, Geneviève apparently too startled to dream of resistance, not attempting to say a word. When they were safely in the room, Cicely closed the door without speaking. Then turning to her cousin, “Now, Geneviève,” she said, “tell me what you have been doing. You have startled me very much.”
Still Geneviève made no reply.
“Geneviève,” repeated Cicely, with a growing impatience in her tone, “speak to me. What is the matter?”