‘Pale was the day and rayless, love,
That had an eve so dim.’
Two well-known lines from one of Ethelberta’s poems.
Jealousy is a familiar kind of heat which disfigures, licks playfully, clouds, blackens, and boils a man as a fire does a pot; and on recognizing these pilferings from what he had grown to regard as his own treasury, Christopher’s fingers began to nestle with great vigour in the palms of his hands. Three or four minutes passed, when the unknown rival gave a last glance at the windows, and walked away. Christopher did not like the look of that walk at all—there was grace enough in it to suggest that his antagonist had no mean chance of finding favour in a woman’s eyes. A sigh, too, seemed to proceed from the stranger’s breast; but as their distance apart was too great for any such sound to be heard by any possibility, Christopher set down that to imagination, or to the brushing of the wind over the trees.
The lighted windows went out one by one, and all the house was in darkness. Julian then walked off himself, with a vigour that was spasmodic only, and with much less brightness of mind than he had experienced on his journey hither. The stranger had gone another way, and Christopher saw no more of him. When he reached Sandbourne, Faith was still sitting up.
‘But I told you I was going to take a long walk,’ he said.
‘No, Christopher: really you did not. How tired and sad you do look—though I always know beforehand when you are in that state: one of your feet has a drag about it as you pass along the pavement outside the window.’
‘Yes, I forgot that I did not tell you.’
He could not begin to describe his pilgrimage: it was too silly a thing even for her to hear of.
‘It does not matter at all about my staying up,’ said Faith assuringly; ‘that is, if exercise benefits you. Walking up and down the lane, I suppose?’
‘No; not walking up and down the lane.’