"
She smiled contemptuously.
"I know people can't understand such matters," she replied, and was silent
for some time. But, through her quietness and silence, I felt, as it were,
the throb of a strange excitement in this woman, almost as if I had been
holding her pulse.
Still, I was in hopes that things might be beginning to go better in
consequence of my interference. Mrs. Oke had scarcely once alluded to
Lovelock in the last two or three days; and Oke had been much more cheerful
and natural since our conversation. He no longer seemed so worried; and
once or twice I had caught in him a look of great gentleness and
loving-kindness, almost of pity, as towards some young and very frail
thing, as he sat opposite his wife.
But the end had come. After that sitting Mrs. Oke had complained of fatigue
and retired to her room, and Oke had driven off on some business to the
nearest town. I felt all alone in the big house, and after having worked a
little at a sketch I was making in the park, I amused myself rambling about
the house.
It was a warm, enervating, autumn afternoon: the kind of weather that
brings the perfume out of everything, the damp ground and fallen leaves,
the flowers in the jars, the old woodwork and stuffs; that seems to bring
on to the surface of one's consciousness all manner of vague recollections
and expectations, a something half pleasurable, half painful, that makes it
impossible to do or to think.
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