At his own suggestion, jumped at by his client, Mr. Prentice returned with Mrs. Thompson to St. Saviour's Court, and told Miss Enid that it would be madness for her any longer to encourage the attentions of such a ne'er-do-well.
"If you were my own daughter," said Mr. Prentice solemnly, "I should forbid your ever seeing him again. And I give you my word of honour I believe that before a year has past you'll thank Mrs. Thompson for standing firm now."
But Enid was still horrid. She seemed infatuated; she would not credit, she would not listen to, anything of detriment to her sweetheart's character. She spoke almost rudely to her mother; and when Mr. Prentice took it on himself to reprove her, she spoke quite rudely to him. Then she marched out of the room.
"I am afraid," said Mr. Prentice, "there'll be a certain amount of wretchedness before you bring her to reason."
There was wretchedness in the little house—Enid pining and moping, assuming the airs of a victim; her mother trying to soften the disappointment, arguing, consoling, promising better fish in the sea than as yet had come out of it. Enid refused to go away from Mallingbridge. Mrs. Thompson herself longed for change, and the chance of forgetting all troubles; there was nothing to keep her here now, although her presence would be required in September; but Enid seemed tied by invisible strings to the home she was making so very uncomfortable.
She would not go away, and she would not undertake to refrain from seeing or writing to Mr. Kenion. She did give her word that she would not slink out and marry him on the sly. But she could safely promise that, because, under the existing conditions of stalemate, it was very doubtful if Mr. Kenion would abet her in so bold a measure. Probably she was aware that Mr. Kenion's courtship had been successfully checked; and the knowledge made her all the more difficult to deal with. Mr. Kenion was neither retiring, nor coming forward: he was just beating time; and perhaps Enid felt humiliated as well as angry when she observed his stationary position.
A pitiful state of affairs—mother and daughter separated in heart and mind; on one side increasing coldness, on the other lessening hope; an estrangement that widened every day.
Then at last Enid consented to start with her mother for a rapid tour in Switzerland. Mr. Kenion, it appeared, had crossed the Irish Channel on some kind of horse-business; and so Lucerne and Mallingbridge had become all one to Enid.
They stayed in many hotels, visited many new scenes; and Mrs. Thompson, looking at high mountains and broad lakes, was still vainly trying to recover her lost child. Enid was calm again, polite again, even conversational; but between herself and her mother she had made a wall as high as the loftiest mountain and a chasm as wide as the biggest of the lakes.