But the days pass, fall into the ordered routine of habit, and Rupert does not speak, does not say the one thing for which Lavinia listens day and night—the one thing whose utterance can keep her sane. It is not her fault that there is any interruption day or night to her listening; and, while forced away for necessary food, there is but one thought in her mind—the thought that he may speak, and she not be by to hear! Daily she strains her ears to listen through the ordeal of the luncheon or dinner, to whose endurance she compels herself for his father’s sake, and through the worse ordeal of relating to Sir George over and over again—since he is never tired of hearing—how it happened. Oh the torture of that repetition! and the keener torture of that explanation which on the first relation has to be given, and has more than once to be repeated, as not quite clear!
“You say that you were ahead! How did you come to be ahead?”
“I caught sight of it first; that gave me a start.”
“And you were within a hundred yards before he caught you up?”
“About that, I think.”
“And the whole distance was a quarter of a mile?”
“I should think so.”
“How was it that he did not overtake you sooner?”
“He—he had a greater distance to cover; he had run on ahead of me before we saw it.”
“How much ahead of you?”