Sidwell held her letter tightly.  Conversation was no longer possible for her; she had a painful throbbing of the heart, and felt that her face must be playing traitor.  Fortunately, Sylvia found it necessary to write a reply to the missive she had received, and her companion was soon at liberty to seek solitude.

For more than an hour she remained alone.  However unemotional the contents of the letter, its arrival would have perturbed her seriously, as in the two previous instances; what she found on opening the envelope threw her into so extreme an agitation that it was long before she could subdue the anguish of disorder in all her senses.  She had tried to believe that Godwin Peak was henceforth powerless to affect her in this way, write what he would.  The romance of her life was over; time had brought the solution of difficulties to which she looked forward; she recognised the inevitable, as doubtless did Godwin also.  But all this was self-deception.  The passionate letter delighted as much as it tortured her; in secret her heart had desired this, though reason suppressed and denied the hope.  No longer need she remember with pangs of shame the last letter she had written, and the cold response; once again things were as they should be—­the lover pleading before her—­she with the control of his fate.  The injury to her pride was healed, and in the thought that perforce she must answer with a final ‘No’, she found at first more of solace than of distress.

Subsidence of physical suffering allowed her to forget this emotion, in its nature unavowable.  She could think of the news Godwin sent, could torment herself with interpretations of Marcella Moxey’s behaviour, and view in detail the circumstances which enabled Godwin to urge a formal suit.  Among her various thoughts there recurred frequently a regret that this letter had not reached her, like the other two, unobserved.  Her father had now learnt that she was in correspondence with the disgraced man; to keep silence would be to cause him grave trouble; yet how much better if fortune had only once more favoured her, so that the story might have remained her secret, from beginning to end.

For was not this the end?——­

At the usual time she went to the drawing-room, and somehow succeeded in conversing as though nothing had disturbed her.  Mr Warricombe was not seen till dinner.  When he came forth, Sidwell noticed his air of preoccupation, and that he avoided addressing her.  The evening asked too much of her self-command; she again withdrew, and only came back when the household was ready for retiring.  In bidding her father goodnight, she forced herself to meet his gaze; he looked at her with troubled inquiry, and she felt her cheek redden.

‘Do you want to get rid of me?’ asked Sylvia, with wonted frankness, when her friend drew near.

‘No.  Let us go to the glass-house.’

Up there on the roof Sidwell often found a retreat when her thoughts were troublesome.  Fitfully, she had resumed her water-colour drawing, but as a rule her withdrawal to the glass-house was for reading or reverie.  Carrying a small lamp, she led the way before Sylvia, and they sat down in the chairs which on one occasion had been occupied by Buck! and Warricombe and Peak.