'Yes—no,' she faltered, turning very pale. 'Give my love to him, Richard—my dear love. I—I will write presently,' and so saying, she slowly and dejectedly left the room.
'Aunt Milly, do you think she guesses?' whispered Richard, when she had gone.
'Heaven only knows, Richard! This is a wretched business; there seems nothing but trouble everywhere,' and Mildred almost wrung her hands. Richard thought he had never seen her so agitated—so unlike herself.
The days and weeks that followed tried Mildred sorely; heavy autumnal rains had set in; wet grass, dripping foliage, heaps of rotting leaves saturated with moisture, met her eyes daily. A sunless, lurid atmosphere surrounded everything; by and by the rain ceased, and a merciless wind drove across the fells, drying up the soddened pools, whirling the last red leaves from the bare stems, and threatening to beat in the vicarage windows.
A terrible scarping wind, whose very breath was bitterness to flesh and blood, blatant and unresting, filled the valley with a strange voice and life.
The river was full to the brim now; the brown water that rushed below the terrace carried away sticks and branches, and light eddying leaves; great fires roared up the vicarage chimneys, while the girls sat and shivered beside them.
Those nights were terrible to Mildred—the wild stir and tumult, the fury of the great rushing wind, fevered her blood with strange excitement, and drove sleep from her pillow, or, when weariness overcame her, haunted her brain with painful images.
Never had the tranquil soul so lacked tranquillity, never had daily life, never had the many-folded hours, held such torture for her.
'I must have change, or I shall be ill,' she thought, as she contemplated her wan and bloodless exterior morning after morning. 'Anything but that—anything but having him pitying me.'
Relief by his hand might be sweet indeed; but a doubt of her own power of self-control, should weakness seize upon her, oppressed her like a nightmare, and the longing to escape from her daily ordeal of suffering amounted to actual agony.