’Very well.  I have no authority, as you say, but common sense bids me let mother know how the case stands.’

And angrily he left the room.

The Critical still lay where it had fallen.  When Sidwell had stood a while in confused thought, her eye turned to it, and she went hurriedly to take it up.  Yes, that was the first thing to be done, to read those pages with close care.  For this she must have privacy.  She ran upstairs and shut herself in her bedroom.

But did not at once begin to read.  It concerned her deeply to know whether Peak had so expressed himself in this paper, that no room was left for doubt as to his convictions; but another question pressed upon her with even more urgency—­could it be true that he did not love her?  If Buckland were wholly right, then it mattered little in what degree she had been misled by intellectual hypocrisy.

It was impossible to believe that Peak had made love to her in cold blood, with none but sordid impulses.  The thought was so humiliating that her mind resolutely rejected it; and she had no difficulty in recalling numberless minutiae of behaviour—­nuances of look and tone such as abide in a woman’s memory—­any one of which would have sufficed to persuade her that he felt genuine emotion.  How had it come to pass that a feeling of friendly interest, which did not for a moment threaten her peace, changed all at once to an agitation only the more persistent the more she tried to subdue it,—­how, if it were not that her heart responded to a passionate appeal, effectual as only the sincerest love can prove?  Prior to that long talk with Godwin, on the eve of her departure for London, she had not imagined that he loved her; when they said good-bye to each other, she knew by her own sensations all that the parting meant to him.  She felt glad, instead of sorry, that they were not to meet again for several months; for she wished to think of him calmly and prudently, now that he presented himself to her imagination in so new an aspect.  The hand-clasp was a mutual assurance of fidelity.

’I should never have loved him, if he had not first loved me.  Of that I am as firmly convinced as of my own existence.  It is not in my nature to dream romances.  I never did so even as a young girl, and at this age I am not likely to fall into a foolish self-deception.  I had often thought about him.  He seemed to me a man of higher and more complex type than those with whom I was familiar; but most surely I never attributed to him even a corresponding interest in me.  I am neither vain, nor very anxious to please; I never suffered because men did not woo me; I have only moderate good looks, and certainly no uncommon mental endowments.—­If he had been attracted by Sylvia, I should have thought it natural; and I more than once suspected that Sylvia was disposed to like him.  It seemed strange at first that his choice should have fallen upon me; yet when I was far away from him, and longed so to sit once more by him and hear him talk, I understood that it might be in my power to afford him the companionship he needed.—­Mercenary?  If I had been merely a governess in the house, he would have loved me just the same!’