“What is it?” she asked impulsively.
Stephen hesitated. “I might tell,” he said; “at the same time, perhaps, it is as well——”
She let go his arm and imperatively pushed it from her, tossing her head. She had just learnt that a good deal of dignity is lost by asking a question to which an answer is refused, even ever so politely; for though politeness does good service in cases of requisition and compromise, it but little helps a direct refusal. “I don’t wish to know anything of it; I don’t wish it,” she went on. “The carriage is waiting for us at the top of the hill; we must get in;” and Elfride flitted to the front. “Papa, here is your Elfride!” she exclaimed to the dusky figure of the old gentleman, as she sprang up and sank by his side without deigning to accept aid from Stephen.
“Ah, yes!” uttered the vicar in artificially alert tones, awaking from a most profound sleep, and suddenly preparing to alight.
“Why, what are you doing, papa? We are not home yet.”
“Oh no, no; of course not; we are not at home yet,” Mr. Swancourt said very hastily, endeavouring to dodge back to his original position with the air of a man who had not moved at all. “The fact is I was so lost in deep meditation that I forgot whereabouts we were.” And in a minute the vicar was snoring again.
That evening, being the last, seemed to throw an exceptional shade of sadness over Stephen Smith, and the repeated injunctions of the vicar, that he was to come and revisit them in the summer, apparently tended less to raise his spirits than to unearth some misgiving.
He left them in the gray light of dawn, whilst the colours of earth were sombre, and the sun was yet hidden in the east. Elfride had fidgeted all night in her little bed lest none of the household should be awake soon enough to start him, and also lest she might miss seeing again the bright eyes and curly hair, to which their owner’s possession of a hidden mystery added a deeper tinge of romance. To some extent—so soon does womanly interest take a solicitous turn—she felt herself responsible for his safe conduct. They breakfasted before daylight; Mr. Swancourt, being more and more taken with his guest’s ingenuous appearance, having determined to rise early and bid him a friendly farewell. It was, however, rather to the vicar’s astonishment, that he saw Elfride walk in to the breakfast-table, candle in hand.
Whilst William Worm performed his toilet (during which performance the inmates of the vicarage were always in the habit of waiting with exemplary patience), Elfride wandered desultorily to the summer house. Stephen followed her thither. The copse-covered valley was visible from this position, a mist now lying all along its length, hiding the stream which trickled through it, though the observers themselves were in clear air.
They stood close together, leaning over the rustic balustrading which bounded the arbour on the outward side, and formed the crest of a steep slope beneath Elfride constrainedly pointed out some features of the distant uplands rising irregularly opposite. But the artistic eye was, either from nature or circumstance, very faint in Stephen now, and he only half attended to her description, as if he spared time from some other thought going on within him.