CHAPTER IV.
THE SWING OF THE PENDULUM.
"A woman is more considerate in affairs of love than a man, because love is more the study and business of her life."—Washington Irving.
It was about this time that Garth began to feel very uncomfortable. Hitherto his quiet, well-assured life, with its eight-and-twenty years of healthful work and activity, its moderate aims and small ambitions, had been singularly free from conflict. Mental disturbance, the weariness of self-argument, the harass of stormy passions, had been wholly unknown to him. In his ordered existence the pains and penalties of a lover's martyrdom had not vexed him.
He was still angry with Dora, but his discomfort did not proceed wholly from his wrath; it lay rather in a concealed fear that he was mistaken in his own feelings.
After all, was it Dora that he wanted? Was the friendship between them sufficient to warrant the assumption that they would be happy together in a life-long union? Was not her lukewarmness, her procrastination, tolerably clear signs that she was, in reality, as heart-whole as he? Would it go hardly with either of them if that dust-shaking movement of his should be carried out?
There was no engagement; the tacit understanding between them did not even amount to a promise. Dora had rejected his first attempt to place things on a more satisfactory footing; in reality he was free as air. Why was her influence so strong over him then that he feared to break the yoke of his subservience, and so stood, as it were, on the comfortless borders of uncertainty, battling between two opinions?
Dora was still away at Brussels, but Mr. Cunningham had returned. From him Garth learnt that they had found the invalid in a far more precarious state than they had at first imagined. The fever had subsided, but had been followed by a serious attack on the lungs. It was impossible for her sister to leave her; and Mr. Cunningham feared that a winter in the south of France would be imperatively needed.
Dora wrote a short letter soon after to the same effect.
The sight of the well-known characters moved Garth to a certain impatience. Why had she written to him? how did she know that his anger was not still hot against her?