yours. You are a very dear person, William.'
The letter went on to repeat the invitation that her husband had extended in the earlier letter. It also told the news of the birth of a son two weeks before.
Mainwaring let the letter fall onto the table when he had finished reading it. He felt sick. He pushed aside the untouched plate of food and pushed himself to his feet. Then he winced and sat down again with an oath. He was forced to accept the butler's assistance to the library, where he sat, his injured leg propped on a stool, staring sightlessly out of the window.
He relived all the pain and the loss of the previous summer as if those events had happened but yesterday. Those first weeks in London had felt like hell itself. He had wandered around restlessly, contented nowhere, avoiding acquaintances, trying to decide whether he should write to her or not, whether he should try to see her or not. She had promised to marry him if he could free her from her existing marriage. And he had been so confident that Robert would raise no objection to divorcing her. He had been so sure that Robert had no feeling for her after having lived apart from her for six years. It was hard to accept the sudden reality of being alone, exiled from her. He had wanted to go to her. He was not sure that she did not wish to see him. But his powerful sense of honor had kept him away. Her husband had refused to set her free, had warned him off, and he had to accept the rights of a husband.
But he had ached for her, as he ached for her now. Elizabeth, with that rare aura of tranquillity that attracted all who knew her. He doubted if she fully realized how much she had been respected and loved by all the families around Ferndale, even though they knew her only as a paid governess and companion. He could not blame Robert for refusing to give her up. It only seemed incredible to him that he had been able to live apart from her for all that time, when they were legally married. But there was obviously a very interesting story surrounding that mystery, a story that he would never know.
Damn Robert Denning! If only she had never met him, perhaps she could have loved him, William Mainwaring. Perhaps they would have been married now and it would have been his child that she had just borne. Foolish thought! He put his head back against the rest of the leather chair in which he sat and stared at the ceiling. If she had not met Robert, she probably would not have ended up in the vicinity of Ferndale as a governess. And she would perhaps have been a different person had she not suffered in the past. In fact, he remembered saying something like that to her when he was trying to persuade her to marry him. No, things were as they were and he would have to learn to live with them.
He closed his eyes. How could he so have forgotten his love as to have become excited by that little wench in the woods? He compared the two women in his mind. Elizabeth, so mature; Nell so childlike. Elizabeth with her beauty, her charm, her social poise; Nell with her wild, untutored grace. Elizabeth's intelligence and good education; Nell's ignorance of all except the wild nature around her. Elizabeth, perfectly groomed and elegant; Nell, shabby and unkempt. How could he have? How could he have so forgotten Elizabeth yesterday as to have violated Nell and even convinced himself that it had been a good experience?
He felt repelled now by the memories. How could he have convinced himself that the girl was a sweet innocent? She was wild and promiscuous. True, she had been a virgin before he had touched her, but it was just pure chance, surely, that he had been the first. The girl would have done as much with any male who happened to come her way. What modest wench spent a great deal of her time alone in the woods? What modest girl offered such an open invitation as a shabby dress that was too small for her and that revealed a considerable expanse of bare leg? He was suddenly glad of his sprained ankle. It offered him the excuse he needed to keep away from his appointment with her. By the time he was recovered, she would have forgotten about him, in all probability. She would probably have found someone else.
Mainwaring was given little more time to brood that day. Although unable to go out himself, he found that almost every man of rank for miles around called on him during the day to inquire about his health and to commiserate with him for having to miss the several entertainments that had been arranged for the coming days.
Chapter 6
The following five days were dreary ones for Helen. She lived in a state of almost unbearable tension. Her last meeting with William Mainwaring had begun something which it was a torture to have to delay. Had she only been able to see him on the following afternoon, all the joy and the excitement of being in love and of sharing of physical relationship with her lover might have been sustained. But she found that as the days crept past she became less confident, more shy of seeing him again. Perhaps for him it had all meant nothing. Perhaps he was accustomed to such encounters. But no, she would not believe it. He must love her as she did him.
She knew from her father's conversation that Mr. Mainwaring was likely to be house-bound for a week. Apparently his leg was badly sprained and he found it quite impossible to put it to the ground. She felt quite safe, therefore, when she returned to the woods two days after his accident, in bringing her books and her paints out of the hut. She decided to paint the stream at last and spent a half-hour vainly trying to capture on paper all the shades of color and light that she had observed the afternoon she had first met William.
She finally gave up the effort in disgust. What she had painted on the paper in no way resembled what she saw in her mind. She could force no communication between mind and hand. Of, of course, she knew the reason. She knew from long experience that she could never produce anything to her satisfaction unless her whole mind was absorbed in the task. And she had not fully concentrated on her painting that afternoon. She was thinking of William. She was wanting him.
She moved to sit on the bank of the stream and rested her chin on her raised knees. She was not at all sure that this love business was good for her. Was this what it did to a person? Was one totally unable to concentrate on any other activity once one loved? Love should enrich life, not impoverish it, she thought. But of course it was her restlessness, her uncertainty that made her so incapable of doing any of the things she had always delighted in.
She tried to picture William's face. It was very handsome, long and rather thin, with a straight nose and firm mouth that gave one the early impression that he was a stern and perhaps humorless man. She had never liked dark eyes. She had always admired blue or light gray. Even her own eyes were too dark a gray to please her. But William's brown eyes suited him. They gave a depth to his glance so that when he looked fully at her, she felt that she was gazing into his very soul. He wore his hair rather longer than was fashionable. It was thick, shiny hair, the sort that made one's fingers itch to touch it. And his smile! It was so unexpectedly warm. It so transfigured his face. Helen smiled and hugged her knees. She remembered the look on that face when it had been close to hers, dreamy with passion.
Suddenly she was on her feet and darting lightly to the hut. A minute later she was outside again, a sketchpad and a piece of charcoal in her hand. For the next hour everything was forgotten: surroundings, loneliness, even longing for William Mainwaring as she sketched his face. Finally it was completed to her satisfaction, though she still wrinkled her nose as she held it at arm's length to view the total effect. She had pictured him smiling. He looked very boyish, not at all the dignified gentleman of her first impression. Was this really he? Or was the other? How could she possibly capture the complete man in one picture? Helen had never been interested in portraiture before. She now began to understand some of the frustrations and challenges involved.
However satisfied or dissatisfied she might be with the sketch she had made, its resting place for that night and the nights that followed was beneath her pillow.
She did not go back to the woods for the next three days. She could not face going there until there was a chance that yet again William would come. Her father reported that he had still not gone out. Her mother too was becoming increasingly cross over her absences during the afternoons, when she might be expected to help entertain guests or to accompany her sisters on visits to various neighbors. For three days she was almost a model daughter.
But finally she could stay away no longer. Mr. Mainwaring was moving around with a cane, the vicar had informed them the previous afternoon when they had paid a call at the vicarage. It was unlikely, of course, that he would attempt to walk all the way to the woods for several more days, but she could not stay away when there
