g warbling
waggoners, lone shepherds, ploughmen, the blacksmith, the carpenter, the
gardener at the Great House, the steward and agent, the parson, clerk,
and so on, were hourly expecting the announcement of St. Cleeve's death.
The sexton had been going to see his brother-in-law, nine miles distant,
but promptly postponed the visit for a few days, that there might be the
regular professional hand present to toll the bell in a note of due
fulness and solemnity; an attempt by a deputy, on a previous occasion of
his absence, having degenerated into a miserable stammering clang that
was a disgrace to the parish.

But Swithin St. Cleeve did not decease, a fact of which, indeed, the
habituated reader will have been well aware ever since the rain came down
upon the young man in the ninth chapter, and led to his alarming illness.
Though, for that matter, so many maimed histories are hourly enacting
themselves in this dun-coloured world as to lend almost a priority of
interest to narratives concerning those

'Who lay great bases for eternity
Which prove more short than waste or ruining.'

How it arose that he did not die was in this wise; and his example
affords another instance of that reflex rule of the vassal soul over the
sovereign body, which, operating so wonderfully in elastic natures, and
more or less in all, originally gave rise to the legend that supremacy
lay on the other side.

The evening of the day after the tender, despairing, farewell kiss of
Lady Constantine, when he was a little less weak than during her visit,
he lay with his face to the window. He lay alone, quiet and resigned. He
had been thinking, sometimes of her and other friends, but chiefly of his
lost discovery. Although nearly unconscious at the time, he had yet been
aware of that kiss, as the delicate flush which followed it upon his
cheek would have told; but he had attached little importance to it as
between woman and man. Had he been dying of love instead of wet weather,
perhaps the impulsive act of that handsome lady would have been seized on
as a proof that his love was returned. As it was her kiss seemed but the
evidence of a naturally demonstrative kindliness, felt towards him
chiefly because he was believed to be leaving her for ever.

The reds of sunset passed, and dusk drew on. Old Hannah came upstairs to
pull down the blinds and as she advanced to the window he said to her, in
a faint voice, 'Well, Hannah, what news to-day