Mrs. Martin shook her head.
‘No; it was a piece of neglect. I hardly know how it happened,’ she said.
‘I am going to, this time,’ said Swithin, and turned the chat to other matters.
XXIII
Swithin could not sleep that night for thinking of his Viviette. Nothing told so significantly of the conduct of her first husband towards the poor lady as the abiding dread of him which was revealed in her by any sudden revival of his image or memory. But for that consideration her almost childlike terror at Swithin’s inadvertent disguise would have been ludicrous.
He waited anxiously through several following days for an opportunity of seeing her, but none was afforded. Her brother’s presence in the house sufficiently accounted for this. At length he ventured to write a note, requesting her to signal to him in a way she had done once or twice before,—by pulling down a blind in a particular window of the house, one of the few visible from the top of the Rings-Hill column; this to be done on any evening when she could see him after dinner on the terrace.
When he had levelled the glass at that window for five successive nights he beheld the blind in the position suggested. Three hours later, quite in the dusk, he repaired to the place of appointment.
‘My brother is away this evening,’ she explained, ‘and that’s why I can come out. He is only gone for a few hours, nor is he likely to go for longer just yet. He keeps himself a good deal in my company, which has made it unsafe for me to venture near you.’
‘Has he any suspicion?’
‘None, apparently. But he rather depresses me.’