'How could you have suspicions of poor Sinfi?' I said, for I was becoming alarmed at the way in which these inquiries were absorbing Winnie's mind.
'It is, I know, Henry, a peculiarity of my nature to be extremely confiding until I have once been deceived, and then to be just as suspicious. Kind as Mr. D'Arcy has been to me, I began to feel restless in his haven of refuge. I think that he perceived it, for I often found his eyes fixed upon me with a somewhat inquiring and anxious expression in them. I felt that I must leave him and go out into the world and take my place in the battle of life.'
'But, Winnie,' I said, 'you don't say that you intended to come to me. Battle of life, indeed! Where should Winnie stand in that battle except by the side of Henry? You knew now where to find me. Sinfi, of course, told you that I was in Wales. And you did not even write to me! What can it mean?'
'Why, Henry, don't you know what it means? Don't you know that the newspapers were full of long paragraphs about the heir of the Aylwins having left his famous bungalow and gone to Japan? Why, it was actually copied into the little penny weekly thing that Mrs. Titwing takes in, and it was there that I read it.'
'This shows the folly of ignoring the papers,' I said. 'I did undoubtedly say in some letters to friends that I proposed going to Japan; but my loss of you, my grief, my misery, paralysed every faculty of mine. My strength of purpose was all gone. I delayed and delayed starting, and never left Wales at all, as you see.'
'Two things,' continued Winnie, 'prevented my leaving Hurstcote—my promise to Mr. D'Arcy to sit to him for his picture of Zenelophon, and the prosaic fact that I had not money in my pocket to travel with; for it was part of the delicate method of Mr. D'Arcy to furnish me with everything money could buy, but to give me no money. His extravagant expenditure upon me in the way of dress, trinkets, and every kind of luxury that could be placed in my room by Mrs. Titwing appalled me. Mrs. Titwing's own bearing, when I spoke to her about them, would have made one almost suppose that they grew there like mushrooms; and if I mentioned them to Mr. D'Arcy he would tell me that Mrs. Titwing was answerable for all that; he knew nothing about such matters.
'What I should in the end have done as to leaving Hurstcote or remaining there I don't know; but after a while something occurred to remove my difficulties. One morning, when I was giving Mr. D'Arcy a long sitting for his picture, a Gypsy friend of Sinfi's, belonging to a family of Lees encamped two or three miles off, called to see her. It was a man, Sinfi told me, whom I did not know, and he had gone away without my seeing him.
'In the afternoon, when Sinfi and I were in the punt fishing together, I could not help noticing that she was much absorbed in thought.
'"This 'ere fishin' brings back old Wales, don't it?" she said.
'"Yes," I said, "and I should love to see the old places again."