g
qualities were derived from her mother, her impulses from her
father. It was her dead father whose example filled her mind this
evening in the soft and tender twilight. She did not say to herself
that she would go and tell Simpson that she forgave him; but she
thought that if Philip asked her again that she should do so.

But when she saw Philip again he told her that Simpson was dead; and
passed on from what he had reason to think would be an unpleasant
subject to her. Thus he never learnt how her conduct might have been
more gentle and relenting than her words--words which came up into
his memory at a future time, with full measure of miserable
significance.

In general, Sylvia was gentle and good enough; but Philip wanted her
to be shy and tender with him, and this she was not. She spoke to
him, her pretty eyes looking straight and composedly at him. She
consulted him like the family friend that he was: she met him
quietly in all the arrangements for the time of their marriage,
which she looked upon more as a change of home, as the leaving of
Haytersbank, as it would affect her mother, than in any more
directly personal way. Philip was beginning to feel, though not as
yet to acknowledge, that the fruit he had so inordinately longed for
was but of the nature of an apple of Sodom.

Long ago, lodging in widow Rose's garret, he had been in the habit
of watching some pigeons that were kept by a neighbour; the flock
disported themselves on the steep tiled roofs just opposite to the
attic window, and insensibly Philip grew to know their ways, and one
pretty, soft little dove was somehow perpetually associated in his
mind with his idea of his cousin Sylvia. The pigeon would sit in one
particular place, sunning herself, and puffing out her feathered
breast, with all the blue and rose-coloured lights gleaming in the
morning rays, cooing softly to herself as she dressed her plumage.
Philip fancied that he saw the same colours in a certain piece of
shot silk--now in the shop; and none other seemed to him so suitable
for his darling's wedding-dress. He carried enough to make a gown,
and gave it to her one evening, as she sate on the grass just
outside the house, half attending to her mother, half engaged in
knitting stockings for her scanty marriage outfit. He was glad that
the sun was not gone down, thus allowing him to display the changing
colours in fuller light. Sylvia admired it duly; even Mrs. Robson was
pleased and