n meant as the
first slap. Taking her abroad was the second.

BOOK THE FOURTH. SOMERSET, DARE AND DE STANCY.

I.

There was no part of Paula's journey in which Somerset did not think of
her. He imagined her in the hotel at Havre, in her brief rest at Paris;
her drive past the Place de la Bastille to the Boulevart Mazas to take
the train for Lyons; her tedious progress through the dark of a winter
night till she crossed the isothermal line which told of the beginning
of a southern atmosphere, and onwards to the ancient blue sea.

Thus, between the hours devoted to architecture, he passed the next
three days. One morning he set himself, by the help of John, to practise
on the telegraph instrument, expecting a message. But though he watched
the machine at every opportunity, or kept some other person on the alert
in its neighbourhood, no message arrived to gratify him till after the
lapse of nearly a fortnight. Then she spoke from her new habitation nine
hundred miles away, in these meagre words:--

'Are settled at the address given. Can now attend to any inquiry about
the building.'

The pointed implication that she could attend to inquiries about nothing
else, breathed of the veritable Paula so distinctly that he could
forgive its sauciness. His reply was soon despatched:--

'Will write particulars of our progress. Always the same.'

The last three words formed the sentimental appendage which she had
assured him she could tolerate, and which he hoped she might desire.

He spent the remainder of the day in making a little sketch to show what
had been done in the castle since her departure. This he despatched with
a letter of explanation ending in a paragraph of a different tenor:--

'I have demonstrated our progress as well as I could; but another
subject has been in my mind, even whilst writing the former. Ask
yourself if you use me well in keeping me a fortnight before you so much
as say that you have arrived? The one thing that reconciled me to your
departure was the thought that I should hear early from you: my idea of
being able to submit to your absence was based entirely upon that.

'But I have resolved not to be out of humour, and to believe that your
scheme of reserve is not unreasonable; neither do I quarrel with your
injunction to keep silence to all relatives. I do not know anything I
can say to show you more plainly my acquiescence in your wish "not to go
too far" (in short, to keep yours