Events mocked her on all sides. By the favour of an accident, and by her
own immense exertions against her instincts, Swithin had been restored to
the rightful heritage that he had nearly forfeited on her account. He
had just started off to utilize it; when she, without a moment's warning,
was asking him again to cast it away. She had set a certain machinery in
motion--to stop it before it had revolved once.
A horrid apprehension possessed her. It had been easy for Swithin to
give up what he had never known the advantages of keeping; but having
once begun to enjoy his possession would he give it up now? Could he be
depended on for such self-sacrifice? Before leaving, he would have done
anything at her request; but the mollia tempora fandi had now passed.
Suppose there arrived no reply from him for the next three months; and
that when his answer came he were to inform her that, having now fully
acquiesced in her original decision, he found the life he was leading so
profitable as to be unable to abandon it, even to please her; that he was
very sorry, but having embarked on this course by her advice he meant to
adhere to it by his own.
There was, indeed, every probability that, moving about as he was doing,
and cautioned as he had been by her very self against listening to her
too readily, she would receive no reply of any sort from him for three or
perhaps four months. This would be on the eve of the Transit; and what
likelihood was there that a young man, full of ardour for that spectacle,
would forego it at the last moment to return to a humdrum domesticity
with a woman who was no longer a novelty?
If she could only leave him to his career, and save her own situation
also! But at that moment the proposition seemed as impossible as to
construct a triangle of two straight lines.
In her walk home, pervaded by these hopeless views, she passed near the
dark and deserted tower. Night in that solitary place, which would have
caused her some uneasiness in her years of blitheness, had no terrors for
her now. She went up the winding path, and, the door being unlocked,
felt her way to the top. The open sky greeted her as in times previous
to the dome-and-equatorial period; but there was not a star to suggest to
her in which direction Swithin had gone. The absence of the dome
suggested a way out of her difficulties. A leap in the dark, and all
would be over. But she had not reached that stage of action as yet, and
the thought was dismissed as quickly as it had come.