It reached his ears that Bellston had not appeared on the evening of his
arrival at any hotel in the town or neighbourhood, or entered his wife's
house at all. 'That's a part of his cruelty,' thought Nicholas. And
when two or three days had passed, and still no account came to him of
Bellston having joined her, he ventured to set out for Froom-Everard.

Christine was so shaken that she was obliged to receive him as she lay on
a sofa, beside the square table which was to have borne their evening
feast. She fixed her eyes wistfully upon him, and smiled a sad smile.

'He has not come?' said Nicholas under his breath.

'He has not.'

Then Nicholas sat beside her, and they talked on general topics merely
like saddened old friends. But they could not keep away the subject of
Bellston, their voices dropping as it forced its way in. Christine, no
less than Nicholas, knowing her husband's character, inferred that,
having stopped her game, as he would have phrased it, he was taking
things leisurely, and, finding nothing very attractive in her limited
mode of living, was meaning to return to her only when he had nothing
better to do.

The bolt which laid low their hopes had struck so recently that they
could hardly look each other in the face when speaking that day. But
when a week or two had passed, and all the horizon still remained as
vacant of Bellston as before, Nicholas and she could talk of the event
with calm wonderment. Why had he come, to go again like this?

And then there set in a period of resigned surmise, during which

So like, so very like, was day to day,

that to tell of one of them is to tell of all. Nicholas would arrive
between three and four in the afternoon, a faint trepidation influencing
his walk as he neared her door. He would knock; she would always reply
in person, having watched for him from the window. Then he would
whisper--'He has not come?'

'He has not,' she would say.

Nicholas would enter then, and she being ready bonneted, they would walk
into the Sallows together as far as to the spot which they had frequently
made their place of appointment in their youthful days. A plank bridge,
which Bellston had caused to be thrown over the stream during his
residence with her in the manor-house, was now again removed, and all was
just the same as in Nicholas's time, when he had been accustomed to wade
across on the edge of the cascade and come up to her like a merman from
the d