In the course of the evening, however, a letter arrived for Lydia, brought by messenger from Threlfall Tower.  Lydia was alone in the sitting-room; Susy was writing upstairs.  The letter ran: 

“I hear you have returned to-day.  May I come and see you to-morrow afternoon—­late?”

To which Lydia replied in her firmest handwriting, “Come by all means.  I shall be here between five and six to-morrow.”  After which she went about with head erect and shining eyes, like one who has secretly received and accepted a challenge.  She was going to sift this matter for herself.  Since a hurried note reporting the latest news of the Mainstairs victims, which had reached her from Faversham on the morning of her departure for London, she had heard nothing from him; and during her weeks of nursing in a darkened room, she had sounded the dim and perilous ways of her own heart as best she could.

She spent the following day in sketching the Helvellyn range, still radiant under its first snow-cap; sitting warmly sheltered on a southern side of a wall, within sound of the same stream beside which she and Faversham had met for the first time in the spring, amid the splendid light and colour of the May sunset.

And now it was already winter.  The fell-sides were red with withered fern; their round or craggy tops showed white against a steely sky; down the withered copses by the stream, the north wind swept; a golden oak showered its dead leaf upon her.  Gray walls, purple fells, the brown and silver of the stream, all the mountain detail that she loved—­she drew it passionately into her soul.  Nature and art—­why had she been so faithless to them—­she “the earth’s unwearied lover?” She was miserably, ironically conscious of her weakness; of the gap between her spring and her autumn.

On her return, she told Susy quietly of her expected visitor.  Susy raised her eyebrows.

“I shall give him tea,” said Susan, “just to save the proprieties with Sarah.”  Sarah was the house parlour-maid.  “But then you won’t need to give me hints.”

Susy had departed.  Lydia and Faversham sat opposite each other in the little drawing-room.

Lydia’s first impression on seeing him had been one of dismay.  He looked much older; and a certain remoteness, a cold and nervous manner seemed to have taken the place of the responsive ease she remembered.  It began to cost her an effort to remember the emotion of their last meeting in the Mainstairs lane.

But when they were alone together, he drew a long breath, and leaning forward over the table before them, his face propped on his hand, he looked at her earnestly.

“I wonder what you have been hearing about me?”