“FROM WANDERING ON A FOREIGN STRAND.”
“So, I will lay one kiss
Upon thy hand, and looking through the lights
Of thy soft eyes, whisper the old word
That runs before all detail and change, ‘farewell.’”
ORESTES.
IT was now about the middle of March. Many of the human swallows at Altes had already taken flight to more northern latitudes, others were preparing for so doing. The season was an unusually early one. The midday sun was already too powerful to face without great precautions in the way of shady hats and parasols, and people no longer congratulated themselves so triumphantly as a few weeks previously, on being out of “that dreadful English climate.”
Even a little London rain would be acceptable, thought Marion, as she walked home one glaring morning from the Rue des Lauriers. And then her thoughts flew on to a certain familiar figure at that very moment probably enough pacing the grey, dreary pavement of the great city itself.
Hardly a week had a yet elapsed since Ralph left, but already she was “wearying” for his return, her heart alternately dancing with sweetest hopes and trembling with misgivings.
But she would leave it all to him. Who so wise, so brave, so true? What lay within human possibility to do, he would, she felt sure, set himself to achieve. The exact, nature of the complications about him, the fetters he had himself told her of, she did not just now much trouble her head about. Vaguely, she imagined them to be connected with Florence Vyse, though what, if this were the case, could be the special object of a journey to London, she was at a loss to think. But he had judged it best not at present to tell her, and she was content to wait for his own explanation—to be followed, alas! by what she could not bear to contemplate, the confession of the long deception she had herself practised.
She had left home this morning, as usual, early, before the arrival of the letters, which to-day Cissy was looking for anxiously, the Indian mail being due.
When she entered the little drawing-room, she was surprised at not finding her cousin there. Nor were there about, the room the usual traces of Mrs. Archer’s recent presence.
“I hope Cissy is not ill,” thought she anxiously, as she hastened to Mrs. Archer’s bedroom.