“My dear girl,” Mr. Verinder groaned, “do you think I’m happy either? Have I been unkind till now? Have I reproached you, even now? How else can I act? I see you drifting”—and he clung to this word—“drifting quite unconsciously to perils that you cannot measure.”
She said no more, and she never changed her attitude in her chair until Mr. Verinder, ostentatiously consulting his watch, said it was time to dress for dinner. As he glanced at her it seemed to him that her nose had grown sharp and thin beneath the veil; her eyes were dry and hard, so that the face, instead of being like a young girl’s, made him think of a haggard woman who has “knocked about” and “been through a lot.”
She herself had thought all the while of the man who was waiting for her, thinking, “He will give me another five minutes; now he won’t wait any longer; now he has really abandoned hope.”
She had lost the hour with him. It was gone for ever; nothing could bring it back. Out of her life they had taken it; this hour of love they had stolen from her—the hour that should have had love in it; and life is so pitifully short, holding, if you count them, so few hours of any sort.
That morning, quite early, Miss Verinder walked out of the house by herself; and she did not return for three days.
During her absence Mr. and Mrs. Verinder took what seemed perhaps an odd course, and yet it would have been difficult in the circumstances to propose a better one. They wished to maintain “appearances” as far as might be possible, to avoid premature scandal, to keep the talk within the four walls of home; and also they were in this predicament, that they did not really know if Miss Verinder would come back next minute or never. They therefore entered into a conspiracy with their servants, giving orders rather than explanations, and instructing them to tell inquirers that Miss Verinder was ill in bed upstairs—nothing serious, merely indisposition, but bed advisable.
Mrs. Bell, of Queen’s Gate, worried them badly by her good-natured solicitude. She was fond of Emmeline; and learning of the indisposition, she came often, brought hot-house grapes, and begged that if reading aloud was out of the question, she might at least be permitted to sit by the bedside and hold the invalid’s hand. Except by Mrs. Bell few inquiries were made.
It was just before dinner when Emmeline reappeared. Her mother and father received her alone in the boudoir; directly she came in, her father seized her by the wrist, and Mrs. Verinder sat down on a “pouf” in the middle of the room. Mr. Verinder released his daughter, almost casting her from him, and began walking to and fro; while Mrs. Verinder, sitting in a huddled fashion, following him with her eyes, so that her head moved from side to side exactly as heads move when people are watching the flight of the ball at a lawn-tennis match. Her hands were shaking, her watchful face expressed great distress as well as fear and wonder. Emmeline seemed calm and fearless.