Her father said no more, but Annabel had a new care for her dark mood to feed upon.  She felt that the words ’I am glad of this marriage’ concerned herself.  They meant that her father was glad of the removal of what was perchance one barrier between Egremont and herself.  And in these long weeks in which she was anguished by the spectacle of suffering, it had become her first desire to be of comfort to the sufferer.  Her ideal of a placid life was shattered; the things which availed her formerly now seemed weak to rely upon.  In so dark a world, what guidance was there save by the hand of love?

With Egremont she was in full intellectual sympathy, and the thought of becoming his wife had no painful associations; but could she bring herself to abandon that ideal of love which had developed with her own development?  Must she relinquish the hope of a great passion, and take the hand of a man whom she merely liked and respected?  It was a question she must decide, for Walter, when they again met, might again seek to win her.  The idealism which she derived from her father would not allow her yet to regard life as a compromise, which women are so skilled in doing practically, though the better part in them to the end revolts.  Yet who was she, that life should bestow its highest blessing upon her?

When at the Tyrrells’ house in London, she feared lest Egremont should come.  Mrs. Tyrrell spoke much of him the first evening, lamenting that he had so withdrawn himself from his friends.  But he did not come.

At Eastbourne, Mr. Newthorpe’s health began to improve.  Even in a week the change was very marked.  He seemed to have taken a resolve to restore the old order of things by force of will.  Doubtless his conversations with Mrs. Ormonde about Annabel were an incentive to effort; relieved from the weight of suffering, he could see that the girl was not herself.  On Paula’s marriage day, he said, in the course of conversation with Annabel: 

’Your aunt desires very much to have you with her for a part of the season.  What do you think of it?  Would you care to go up in May?’

Annabel did not at once reject the idea.

‘It is my opinion that you need some such change,’ her father continued.  ’The last quarter of a year has done you harm.  In a month I hope to be sound enough.’

‘I will think of it,’ she said.  And there the subject rested.

The town was secretly attracting her.  The odour of the Tyrrells’ house had exercised a certain seduction.  Though she saw but one or two old acquaintances there, the dining-room, the drawing-room, brought the past vividly back to her.  She was not so wholly alien to her mother’s blood that the stage-life of the world was without appeal to her, and circumstances were favourable to a revival of that element in her character which I touched upon when speaking of her growth out of childhood.  It is a common piece of observation that studious