e her.

She made a faint affirmative movement of the head and the cold hand he
had been chafing tried feebly to withdraw itself. He rose at once, and
stood a moment beside her, looking down at her. Then he went.

CHAPTER XXIX.

He shut the door softly, and went downstairs again. It was between ten
and eleven. The lights in the lower passage were just extinguished;
everyone else in the house had gone to bed. Mechanically he stooped
and put away the child's bricks, he pushed the chairs back into their
places, and then he paused awhile before the open window. But there
was not a tremor on the set face. He felt himself capable of no more
emotion. The fount of feeling, of pain, was for the moment dried up.
What he was mainly noticing was the effect of some occasional gusts
of night wind on the moonlit cornfield; the silver ripples they sent
through it; the shadows thrown by some great trees in the western
corners of the field; the glory of the moon itself in the pale immensity
of the sky.

Presently he turned away, leaving one lamp still burning in the room,
softly unlocked the hall door, took his hat and went out. He walked up
and down the wood-path or sat on the bench there for some time, thinking
indeed, but thinking with a certain stern practical dryness. Whenever
he felt the thrill of feeling stealing over him again, he would make a
sharp effort at repression. Physically he could not bear much more, and
he knew it. A part remained for him to play, which must be played with
tact, with prudence, and with firmness. Strength and nerves had been
sufficiently weakened already. For his wife's sake, his people's sake,
his honorable reputation's sake, he must guard himself from a collapse
which might mean far more than physical failure.

So in the most patient, methodical way he began to plan out the
immediate future. As to waiting, the matter was still in Catherine's
hands; but he knew that finely tempered soul; he knew that when she had
mastered her poor woman's self, as she had always mastered it from her
childhood, she would not bid him wait. He hardly took the possibility
into consideration. The proposal had had some reality in his eyes when
he went to see Mr. Grey; now it had none, though he could hardly have
explained why.

He had already made arrangements with an old Oxford friend to take
his duty during his absence on the Continent. It had been originally
suggested that this Mr. Armitstead should come to Mure