And Robin would be with her.

CHAPTER IV

A little more than six months later, when a golden September lay over the land, Rosamund could scarcely believe that she had ever lived out of Welsley.  Dion was still in South Africa, in good health and “without a scratch.”  In his last letter home he had written that he had no idea how long the C.I.V.’s would be kept in South Africa.  The war dragged on, and despite the English successes which had followed such bitter defeats no one could say when it would end.  There was no immediate reason, therefore, for Rosamund to move back to London.

She dreaded that return.  She loved Welsley and could not now imagine herself living anywhere else.  Robin, too was a pronounced, even an enthusiastic, “Welsleyite,” and had practically forgotten “old London,” as he negligently called the greatest city in the world.  They were very happy in Welsley.  In fact, the Dean’s widow was the only rift in Rosamund’s lute, that lute which was so full of sweet and harmonious music.

Rosamund’s lease of the house in the Precincts, “Little Cloisters,” as it was deliciously named, had been for six months, from the 1st of March till the 1st of September.  As Dion was not coming home yet, and as he wrote begging her to live on at Welsley if she preferred it to London, she was anxious to “renew” for another six months.  The question whether Mrs. Duncan Browning would, or would not, renew really tormented Rosamund, and the uncertainty in which she was living, and the misery it caused her, showed her how much of her heart had been given to Welsley.

The Dean’s widow was capricious and swayed by fluctuations of health.  She was “up and down,” whatever that betokened.  At one moment she “saw the sun,”—­her poetical way of expressing that she began to feel pretty well,—­and thought she had had enough of the “frivolous existence one leads in an hotel”; at another a fit of sneezing,—­“was not the early morning sneeze but the real thing,”—­a pang of rheumatism, or a touch of bronchitis, made her fear for the damp of Welsley.  She would and she would not, and Rosamund could not induce her to come to a decision, and suffered agonies at the thought of being turned out of Little Cloisters.  When Dion came back, of course, a flitting from Welsley would have to be faced, but to be driven away without that imperative reason would indeed be gall and wormwood.  There were days when Rosamund felt unchristian towards Mrs. Dean, upon whom she had never looked, but with whom she had exchanged a great many cordial letters.

In August, under the influence of a “heavy cold, which seems the worse because of the heat,” Mrs. Browning had agreed to let Rosamund stay on for another month, September; and now Rosamund was anxiously awaiting a reply to her almost impassioned appeal for a six months’ extension of her lease.  Canon Wilton was again in residence in the Precincts, and one afternoon he called at Little Cloisters, after the three o’clock service, to inquire what was the result of this appeal.  Beatrice was staying with her sister for a few days, and when the Canon was shown in she was alone in the drawing-room, having just come up from the garden, where she had been playing with Robin, whose chirping high voice was audible, floating up from below.