But M. de l’Orme was really too irresistible, and Harry after all only a schoolboy.
They took the little man a walk (Harry worse confounding his confusion by offering to put him in the way of “doing” Brighton), exhibiting to him the beauties of this London-super-mare, with which kind attention he was so charmed, as to be rather at a loss for sufficiently effusive expressions in English, and obliged consequently to fall back upon his native tongue.
Then Harry took upon himself to invite him to dine with them, a proposal which Marion could not but second; aghast though she was at her brother’s audacity; for at no hour of the day, and on no day of the week, were they secure from their father’s swooping down upon them. Fortunately, however, M. de l’Orme was obliged to leave Brighton at once, and could not therefore accept their invitation, much to Marion’s relief, for besides her fear of Mr. Vere’s appearance, she had been every moment in terror of the little Frenchman coming, out with some allusion to her pupils at Altes.
But the Severn family was not mentioned till the last moment, when M. de l’Orme observed casually that several of their Altes acquaintances were spending the summer in Switzerland. The Berwicks, he said, were a Lausanne, and “Miladi Sevèrne” had taken a maison de champaigne at Vevey.
“All’s well that ends well,” and Marion was thankful when their friend had bidden them an overflowing farewell, and taken himself off in an opposite direction.
By the middle of August Harry was off again, for what he trusted would be his last half-year at the Woolwich tutor’s; and Marion returned to her lonely life, brightened only by the hope that the end of the following month would bring her an answer from Cissy.
No letter from her cousin had yet reached her; but from the elder Mrs. Archer at Cheltenham she had heard of the traveller’s safe arrival at their destination. These few weeks were not so bad as those immediately succeeding her return home. To certain people, weak-minded ones perhaps, in such circumstances, the looking forward to a distinct goal is a great help! But still it was weary work. All sorts of torturing fears would now and then rush into her mind—that Ralph would have left for the East before any communication from Cissy could reach him—that he would never forgive her deception—that he was already married to Miss Vyse; these and a hundred other “thick coming fancies” from time to time came to torment her; above all, in the middle of the night, would they crowd upon her, ten-fold deepened and magnified, by the strange power of the all-surrounding darkness and silence.
It sometimes struck her as curious that she never dreamt of Ralph; for naturally she was a great dreamer, and since infancy had been accustomed to live over again in “mid-night fantasy,” the pleasures and sorrows, the hopes and disappointments of the day.
The end of September came at last. The Indian mail was in, but as yet no letters for her. Still she was not disheartened. Not improbably Cissy might have enclosed hers in a budget to her mother-in-law; or even supposing the worst, that her cousin had been prevented writing at once, she must just extend a little further her laboriously acquired patience, and hope for what the next mail might bring.
She rose early on the morning of the 30th, and sat at the dining room window, watching for the postman, as had come to be a habit with her. He came at last. Brown, the discreet, seemed to guess she was eager to hear what he had brought. For before she asked any question, he announced, “No letters for you, ma’am—all for my master.”