'In shadowy thoroughfares of thought,'
Faith interrupted with, 'I believe there is one of the dancers now!--why,
I should have thought they had all gone to bed, and wouldn't get up again
for days.' She indicated to him a figure on the lawn towards the left,
looking upon the same flashing scene as that they themselves beheld.
'It is your own particular one,' continued Faith. 'Yes, I see the blue
flowers under the edge of her cloak.'
'And I see her squirrel-coloured hair,' said Christopher.
Both stood looking at this apparition, who once, and only once, thought
fit to turn her head towards the front of the house they were gazing
from. Faith was one in whom the meditative somewhat overpowered the
active faculties; she went on, with no abundance of love, to theorize
upon this gratuitously charming woman, who, striking freakishly into her
brother's path, seemed likely to do him no good in her sisterly
estimation. Ethelberta's bright and shapely form stood before her critic
now, smartened by the motes of sunlight from head to heel: what Faith
would have given to see her so clearly within!
'Without doubt she is already a lady of many romantic experiences,' she
said dubiously.
'And on the way to many more,' said Christopher. The tone was just of
the kind which may be imagined of a sombre man who had been up all night
piping that others might dance.
Faith parted her lips as if in consternation at possibilities.
Ethelberta, having already become an influence in Christopher's system,
might soon become more--an indestructible fascination--to drag him about,
turn his soul inside out, harrow him, twist him, and otherwise torment
him, according to the stereotyped form of such processes.
They were interrupted by the opening of a door. A servant entered and
came up to them.
'This is for you, I believe, sir,' he said. 'Two guineas;' and he placed
the money in Christopher's hand. 'Some breakfast will be ready for you
in a moment if you like to have it. Would you wish it brought in here;
or will you come to the steward's room?'
'Yes, we will come.' And the man then began to extinguish the lights one
by one. Christopher dropped the two pounds and two shillings singly into
his pocket, and looking listlessly at the footman said, 'Can you tell me
the address of that lady on the lawn? Ah, she has disappeared!'
'She wore a dress with blue flowers,' said Faith.
'And remarkable bright in her manner? O, that's the young widow,
Mrs--what's that name--I forget for the moment.'
'Widow?' said Christopher, the eyes of his understanding getting
wonderfully clear, and Faith uttering a private ejaculation of thanks
that after all no commandments were likely to be broken in this matter.
'The lady I mean is quite a girlish sort of woman.'
'Yes, yes, so she is--that's the one. Coachman says she must have been
born a widow, for there is not time for her ever to have been made one.
However, she's not quite such a chicken as all that. Mrs. Petherwin,
that's the party's name.'
'Does she live here?'
'No, she is staying in the house visiting for a few days with her mother-
in-law. They are a London family, I don't know her address.'
'Is she a poetess?'
'That I cannot say. She is very clever at verses; but she don't lean
over gates to see the sun, and goes to church as regular as you or I, so
I should hardly be inclined to say that she's the complete thing. When
she's up in one of her vagaries she'll sit with the ladies and make up
pretty things out of her head as fast as sticks a-breaking. They will
run off her tongue like cotton from a reel, and if she can ever be got in
the mind of telling a story she will bring it out that serious and awful
that it makes your flesh creep upon your bones; if she's only got to say
that she walked out of one door into another, she'll tell it so that
there seems something wonderful in it. 'Tis a bother to start her, so
our people say behind her back, but, once set going, the house is all
alive with her. However, it will soon be dull enough; she and Lady
Petherwin are off to-morrow for Rookington, where I believe they are
going to stay over New Year's Day.'
'Where do you say they are going?' inquired Christopher, as they followed
the footman.
'Rookington Park--about three miles out of Sandbourne, in the opposite
direction to this.'
'A widow,' Christopher murmured.
Faith overheard him. 'That makes no difference to us, does it?' she said
wistfully.
Forty minutes later they were driving along an open road over a ridge
which commanded a view of a small inlet below them, the sands of this
nook being sheltered by crumbling cliffs. Here at once they saw, in the
full light of the sun, two women standing side by side, their faces
directed over the sea.
'There she is again!' said Faith. 'She has walked along the shore from
the lawn where we saw her before.'
'Yes,' said the coachman, 'she's a curious woman seemingly. She'll talk
to any poor body she meets. You see she had been out for a morning walk
instead of going to bed, and that is some queer mortal or other she has
picked up with on her way.'
'I wonder she does not prefer some rest,' Faith observed.
The road then dropped into a hollow, and the women by the sea were no
longer within view from the carriage, which rapidly neared Sandbourne
with the two musicians.