And then, he just looked his old strange look upon her; and he went:  and she dropped her eyes upon the letter.  He had got into the far meadow, where the path makes a little turn round the clump of poplars, and hides itself.  Just there he looked over his shoulder, a last look it might be, the handsome strange creature that had made so many of her hours pass so pleasantly; he that was so saucy with everyone else, and so gentle with her; of whom, she believed, she might make anything, a hero or a demigod!  She knew a look would call him back—­back, maybe, to her feet; but she could not give that little sign.  There she stood, affecting to read that letter, one word of which she did not see.  ’She does not care; but—­but there’s no one like her.  No—­she does not care,’ he thought; and she let him think it:  but her heart swelled to her throat, and she felt as if she could have screamed, ’Come back—­my only love—­my darling—­without you I must die!’ But she did not raise her head.  She only read on, steadily, old Miss Wardle’s letter—­over and over—­the same half-dozen lines.  And when, after five minutes more, she lifted up her eyes, the hoary poplars were ruffling their thick leaves in the breeze—­and he gone; and the plaintive music came mellowed from the village, and the village and the world seemed all on a sudden empty for her.

CHAPTER XXXV.

IN WHICH AUNT BECKY AND DOCTOR TOOLE, IN FULL BLOW, WITH DOMINICK, THE FOOTMAN, BEHIND THEM, VISIT MISS LILY AT THE ELMS.

After such leave-takings, especially where something like a revelation takes place, there sometimes supervenes, I’m told, a sort of excitement before the chill and ache of separation sets in.  So, Lily, when she went home, found that her music failed her, all but the one strange little air, ‘The river ran between them;’ and then she left the harpsichord and went into the garden through the glass door, but the flowers had only half their interest, and the garden was solitary, and she felt restless, as if she were going to make a journey, or looking for strange news; and then she bethought her again of Mrs. Colonel Stafford, that she might have by this time returned from Dublin, and there was some little interest about the good old lady, even in this, that she had just returned by the same road that he had gone away by, that she might have chanced to see him as he passed; that at least she might happen to speak of him, and to know something of the likelihood of his return, or even to speculate about him; for now any talk in which his name occurred was interesting, though she did not know it quite herself.  So she went down to the King’s House, and did find old Mrs. Stafford at home:  and after an entertaining gossip about some ‘rich Nassau damask,’ at Haughton’s in the Coombe, that had taken her fancy mightily, and how she had chosen a set of new Nankeen plates and fine oblong dishes at the Music Hall, and how