Fitzpiers had seated himself near her. "What sets you in this mournful mood?" he asked, gently. (In reality he knew that it was the result of a loss of tone from staying in-doors so much, but he did not say so.)
"My reflections. Doctor, you must not come here any more. They begin to think it a farce already. I say you must come no more.
There--don't be angry with me;" and she jumped up, pressed his hand, and looked anxiously at him. "It is necessary. It is best for both you and me."
"But," said Fitzpiers, gloomily, "what have we done?"
"Done--we have done nothing. Perhaps we have thought the more.
However, it is all vexation. I am going away to Middleton Abbey, near Shottsford, where a relative of my late husband lives, who is confined to her bed. The engagement was made in London, and I can't get out of it. Perhaps it is for the best that I go there till all this is past. When are you going to enter on your new practice, and leave Hintock behind forever, with your pretty wife on your arm?"
"I have refused the opportunity. I love this place too well to depart."
"You HAVE?" she said, regarding him with wild uncertainty.
"Why do you ruin yourself in that way? Great Heaven, what have I done!"
"Nothing. Besides, you are going away."
"Oh yes; but only to Middleton Abbey for a month or two. Yet perhaps I shall gain strength there--particularly strength of mind--I require it. And when I come back I shall be a new woman; and you can come and see me safely then, and bring your wife with you, and we'll be friends--she and I. Oh, how this shutting up of one's self does lead to indulgence in idle sentiments. I shall not wish you to give your attendance to me after to-day. But I am glad that you are not going away--if your remaining does not injure your prospects at all."
As soon as he had left the room the mild friendliness she had preserved in her tone at parting, the playful sadness with which she had conversed with him, equally departed from her. She became as heavy as lead--just as she had been before he arrived. Her whole being seemed to dissolve in a sad powerlessness to do anything, and the sense of it made her lips tremulous and her closed eyes wet. His footsteps again startled her, and she turned round.
"I returned for a moment to tell you that the evening is going to be fine. The sun is shining; so do open your curtains and put out those lights. Shall I do it for you?"
"Please--if you don't mind."
He drew back the window-curtains, whereupon the red glow of the lamp and the two candle-flames became almost invisible with the flood of late autumn sunlight that poured in. "Shall I come round to you?" he asked, her back being towards him.
"No," she replied.
"Why not?"
"Because I am crying, and I don't want to see you."
He stood a moment irresolute, and regretted that he had killed the rosy, passionate lamplight by opening the curtains and letting in garish day.
"Then I am going," he said.
"Very well," she answered, stretching one hand round to him, and patting her eyes with a handkerchief held in the other.
"Shall I write a line to you at--"
"No, no." A gentle reasonableness came into her tone as she added, "It must not be, you know. It won't do."
"Very well. Good-by." The next moment he was gone.
In the evening, with listless adroitness, she encouraged the maid who dressed her for dinner to speak of Dr. Fitzpiers's marriage.
"Mrs. Fitzpiers was once supposed to favor Mr. Winterborne," said the young woman.
"And why didn't she marry him?" said Mrs. Charmond.
"Because, you see, ma'am, he lost his houses."
"Lost his houses? How came he to do that?"
"The houses were held on lives, and the lives dropped, and your agent wouldn't renew them, though it is said that Mr. Winterborne had a very good claim. That's as I've heard it, ma'am, and it was through it that the match was broke off."
Being just then distracted by a dozen emotions, Mrs. Charmond sunk into a mood of dismal self-reproach. "In refusing that poor man his reasonable request," she said to herself, "I foredoomed my rejuvenated girlhood's romance. Who would have thought such a business matter could have nettled my own heart like this? Now for a winter of regrets and agonies and useless wishes, till I forget him in the spring. Oh! I am glad I am going away."
She left her chamber and went down to dine with a sigh. On the stairs she stood opposite the large window for a moment, and looked out upon the lawn. It was not yet quite dark. Half-way up the steep green slope confronting her stood old Timothy Tangs, who was shortening his way homeward by clambering here where there was no road, and in opposition to express orders that no path was to be made there. Tangs had momentarily stopped to take a pinch of snuff; but observing Mrs. Charmond gazing at him, he hastened to get over the top out of hail. His precipitancy made him miss his footing, and he rolled like a barrel to the bottom, his snuffbox rolling in front of him.
Her indefinite, idle, impossible passion for Fitzpiers; her constitutional cloud of misery; the sorrowful drops that still hung upon her eyelashes, all made way for the incursive mood started by the spectacle. She burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, her very gloom of the previous hour seeming to render it the more uncontrollable. It had not died out of her when she reached the dining-room; and even here, before the servants, her shoulders suddenly shook as the scene returned upon her; and the tears of her hilarity mingled with the remnants of those engendered by her grief.
She resolved to be sad no more. She drank two glasses of champagne, and a little more still after those, and amused herself in the evening with singing little amatory songs.
"I must do something for that poor man Winterborne, however," she said.