The interior was high, wide, and cool and pleasant after the hot sun without; but again she had no time to make observations. Mr. Rhys led her immediately on to an inner room. Eleanor's eyes were dazed and her heart was beating; she could hardly see anything, except, as one takes impressions without seeing, that this answered to the inner room at Mrs. Balliol's, and had far more the air of being furnished and pleasantly habitable. What gave it the air she could not tell; for Mr. Rhys was unfastening her bonnet and throwing it off, and then taking her sea-cloak from his arm and casting that somewhat carelessly away; and then his arms enfolded her. It was the first time they had been really alone since her coming; and now he was silent, so silent that Eleanor could scarcely bear it. She was aware his eyes were studying her fixedly, and she felt as if they could see nothing beside the conscious mounting of the blood from cheek to brow, which reached what to her was a painful flush. Probably he saw it, for the answer came in a little closer pressure of the arms that were about her. She ventured to look up at last; she was unable to endure this silent inspection; and then she saw that his face was full of emotion that wrought too deep for words, too deep even for caresses, beyond the one or two grave kisses with which he had welcomed her. It overcame Eleanor completely. She could not meet the look. It was much more than mere joy or affection; there was an expression of the sort of tenderness with which a mother would clasp a lost child; a full keen sympathy for all she had done and gone through and ventured for him, for all her loneliness and forlornness that had been, and that was still with respect to all the guardians of her childhood or womanhood up to that hour. Eleanor's head sank down. She felt none of that now for which his looks expressed such keen regard; she had got to her resting-place, not the less for all the awe and strangeness of it, which were upon her yet. She could have cried for a very different feeling; but she would not; it did not suit her. Mr. Rhys let her be still for a few minutes. When he did speak, his voice was gravely tender indeed, as it had been to her all day, but there was no sentimentality about it. He spoke clear and abrupt, as he often did.
"Do you want to go back to the other house to dinner?"
"Do you wish it?" said Eleanor looking up to find out.
"I wish to see nothing earthly, this afternoon, but your face."
"Then do let it be so!" said Eleanor.
He laughed and kissed her, more gaily this time, without seeming able to let her out of his arms; and left her at last with the injunction to keep still a minute till he should return, and on no account to begin an examination of the house by herself. Very little danger there was! Eleanor had not the free use of her eyes yet for anything. Presently he came back, put her hand on his arm, and led her out into the middle apartment.
"Do you know," he said as he passed through this, keeping her hand in his own, and looking down at her face,—"what is the first lesson you have to learn?"
"No," said Eleanor, most unaffectedly frightened; she did not know why.
"The first thing we have to do, on taking possession here to-day is, to give our thanks and offer our prayers in company. Do not you think so?"
"Yes—" said Eleanor breathlessly. "But what then?"