Sylvia's Lovers

'As the day lengthens so the cold strengthens.' It was so that year;

the hard frost which began on new year's eve lasted on and on into

late February, black and bitter, but welcome enough to the farmers,

as it kept back the too early growth of autumn-sown wheat, and gave

them the opportunity of leading manure. But it did not suit invalids

as well, and Bell Robson, though not getting worse, did not

make any progress towards amendment. Sylvia was kept very busy,

notwithstanding that she had the assistance of a poor widow-woman in

the neighbourhood on cleaning, or washing, or churning days. Her

life was quiet and monotonous, although hard-working; and while her

hands mechanically found and did their accustomed labour, the

thoughts that rose in her head always centred on Charley Kinraid,

his ways, his words, his looks, whether they all meant what she

would fain believe they did, and whether, meaning love at the time,

such a feeling was likely to endure. Her mother's story of crazy

Nancy had taken hold of her; but not as a 'caution,' rather as a

parallel case to her own. Like Nancy, and borrowing the poor girl's

own words, she would say softly to herself, 'He once was here'; but

all along she believed in her heart he would come back again to her,

though it touched her strangely to imagine the agonies of forsaken

love.

Philip knew little of all this. He was very busy with facts and

figures, doggedly fighting through the necessary business, and only

now and then allowing himself the delicious relaxation of going to

Haytersbank in an evening, to inquire after his aunt's health, and

to see Sylvia; for the two Fosters were punctiliously anxious to

make their shopmen test all their statements; insisting on an

examination of the stock, as if Hepburn and Coulson were strangers

to the shop; having the Monkshaven auctioneer in to appraise the

fixtures and necessary furniture; going over the shop books for the

last twenty years with their successors, an employment which took up

evening after evening; and not unfrequently taking one of the young

men on the long commercial journeys which were tediously made in a

gig. By degrees both Hepburn and Coulson were introduced to distant

manufacturers and wholesale dealers. They would have been willing to

take the Fosters' word for every statement the brothers had made on

new year's day; but this, it was evident, would not have satisfied

their masters, who were scrupulous in insisting that whatever

advantage there was should always fall on the side of the younger

men.

When Philip saw Sylvia she was always quiet and gentle; perhaps more

silent than she had been a year ago, and she did not attend so

briskly to what was passing around her. She was rather thinner and

paler; but whatever change there was in her was always an

improvement in Philip's eyes, so long as she spoke graciously to

him. He thought she was suffering from long-continued anxiety about

her mother, or that she had too much to do; and either cause was

enough to make him treat her with a grave regard and deference which

had a repressed tenderness in it, of which she, otherwise occupied,

was quite unaware. She liked him better, too, than she had done a

year or two before, because he did not show her any of the eager

attention which teased her then, although its meaning was not fully

understood.