day, having taken no decisive step, nor
said any decisive words. All that he had done was to make it apparent
that the matter was not to end there, as had seemed likely when they
parted in London. Chatty now saw that it was not to be so. The thing
was not to drop into the mere blank of unfulfilledness, but was to be
brought to her decision, to yea or nay. This conviction, and the company
of Dick in a relation which could not but be new, since it was no longer
accidental, but of the utmost gravity in her life, gave a new turn
altogether to her existence. The change in her was too subtle for the
general eye. Even Minnie, sharp as she was, could make nothing more of
it than that Chatty was "more alive looking," a conclusion which, like
most things nowadays, she declared to come from Eustace. Mrs. Warrender
entered with more sympathy into her daughter's life, veiled not so much
by intention as by instinctive modesty and reserve from her as from all
others: but even she did not know what was in Chatty's mind, the slow
rising of an intense light which illuminated her as the sun lights up
a fertile plain,--the low land drinking in every ray, unconscious of
shadow,--making few dramatic effects, but receiving the radiance at
every point. Chatty herself felt like that low-lying land. The new life
suffused her altogether, drawing forth few reflections, but flooding the
surface of her being, and warming her nature through and through. It was
to be hers, then,--not as Minnie, not as Theo had it,--but like
Shakespeare, like poetry, like that which maidens dream.

Dick went back to town. When he had gone to his old friend for advice
his mind had revolted against that advice and determined upon his own
way; but the short interview with Lizzie Hampson had changed everything.
He had not meant to speak to her on the subject; and what did it matter
though he had spoken to her for a twelvemonth? She could not have
understood him or his desire. She thought he meant to punish the poor,
lost creature, perhaps to put her in prison. The word divorce had
terrified her. And yet he now felt as if he had committed himself to
that procedure, and it must be carried out. Yet a strange reluctance to
take the first steps retarded him. Even to an unknown advocate in the
far West a man is reluctant to allow that his name has been dishonoured.
The publicity of an investigation before a tribunal, even when three
or four thousand miles away, is horrible to thi