some such
thing, I think. As I said, I don't like you to be seen in a town on
horseback alone; but go if you will.'

Thursday week. Her father had named the very day that Stephen also had
named that morning as the earliest on which it would be of any use to
meet her; that was, about fifteen days from the day on which he had left
Endelstow. Fifteen days--that fragment of duration which has acquired
such an interesting individuality from its connection with the English
marriage law.

She involuntarily looked at her father so strangely, that on becoming
conscious of the look she paled with embarrassment. Her father, too,
looked confused. What was he thinking of?

There seemed to be a special facility offered her by a power external
to herself in the circumstance that Mr. Swancourt had proposed to leave
home the night previous to her wished-for day. Her father seldom took
long journeys; seldom slept from home except perhaps on the night
following a remote Visitation. Well, she would not inquire too curiously
into the reason of the opportunity, nor did he, as would have been
natural, proceed to explain it of his own accord. In matters of fact
there had hitherto been no reserve between them, though they were not
usually confidential in its full sense. But the divergence of their
emotions on Stephen's account had produced an estrangement which just
at present went even to the extent of reticence on the most ordinary
household topics.

Elfride was almost unconsciously relieved, persuading herself that her
father's reserve on his business justified her in secrecy as regarded
her own--a secrecy which was necessarily a foregone decision with her.
So anxious is a young conscience to discover a palliative, that the ex
post facto nature of a reason is of no account in excluding it.

The intervening fortnight was spent by her mostly in walking by
herself among the shrubs and trees, indulging sometimes in sanguine
anticipations; more, far more frequently, in misgivings. All her flowers
seemed dull of hue; her pets seemed to look wistfully into her eyes,
as if they no longer stood in the same friendly relation to her as
formerly. She wore melancholy jewellery, gazed at sunsets, and talked to
old men and women. It was the first time that she had had an inner and
private world apart from the visible one about her. She wished that her
father, instead of neglecting her even more than usual, would make some
advance--just one word; she