“He will be here in two days.”
“But he will expect to find you.”
“It is almost the first of April. We are to have Cicely with us for the summer. There is no reason why I should not go back to my work at Westmore.”
There was in fact no reason that he could produce; and the next day they returned to Hanaford together.
With her perceptions strung to the last pitch of sensitiveness, she felt a change in Amherst as soon as they re-entered Bessy’s house. He was still scrupulously considerate, almost too scrupulously tender; but with a tinge of lassitude, like a man who tries to keep up under the stupefying approach of illness. And she began to hate the power by which she held him. It was not thus they had once walked together, free in mind though so linked in habit and feeling; when their love was not a deadening drug but a vivifying element that cleared thought instead of stifling it. There were moments when she felt that open alienation would be easier, because it would be nearer the truth. And at such moments she longed to speak, to beg him to utter his mind, to go with her once for all into the depths of the subject they continued to avoid. But at the last her heart always failed her: she could not face the thought of losing him, of hearing him speak estranging words to her.
They had been at Hanaford for about ten days when, one morning at breakfast, Amherst uttered a sudden exclamation over a letter he was reading.
“What is it?” she asked in a tremor.
He had grown very pale, and was pushing the hair from his forehead with the gesture habitual to him in moments of painful indecision.
“What is it?” Justine repeated, her fear growing.
“Nothing–-” he began, thrusting the letter under the pile of envelopes by his plate; but she continued to look at him anxiously, till she drew his eyes to hers.
“Mr. Langhope writes that they’ve appointed Wyant to Saint Christopher’s,” he said abruptly.
“Oh, the letter—we forgot the letter!” she cried.
“Yes—we forgot the letter.”
“But how dare he–-?”
Amherst said nothing, but the long silence between them seemed full of ironic answers, till she brought out, hardly above her breath: “What shall you do?”
“Write at once—tell Mr. Langhope he’s not fit for the place.”
“Of course–-” she murmured.
He went on tearing open his other letters, and glancing at their contents. She leaned back in her chair, her cup of coffee untasted, listening to the recurrent crackle of torn paper as he tossed aside one letter after another.
Presently he rose from his seat, and as she followed him from the dining-room she noticed that his breakfast had also remained untasted. He gathered up his letters and walked toward the smoking-room; and after a moment’s hesitation she joined him.
“John,” she said from the threshold.
He was just seating himself at his desk, but he turned to her with an obvious effort at kindness which made the set look of his face the more marked.
She closed the door and went up to him.
“If you write that to Mr. Langhope—Dr. Wyant will—will tell him,” she said.
“Yes—we must be prepared for that.”
She was silent, and Amherst flung himself down on the leather ottoman against the wall. She stood before him, clasping and unclasping her hands in speechless distress.
“What would you have me do?” he asked at length, almost irritably.
