He found the drawing-room empty.  He rang the bell.  “Where is Miss Fountain?” John didn’t know, but supposed she had gone to her room.

“You don’t know?  You never know anything.  Send her maid to me.”

The maid came and courtesied demurely at the door.

“Tell your mistress I want to speak to her directly—­before she undresses.”

The maid went out, and soon returned to say that her mistress had retired to rest; but that, if he pleased, she would rise, and just make a demi-toilet, and come to him.  This smooth and fair-sounding proposal was not, I grieve to say, so graciously received as offered.  “Much obliged,” snapped old Fountain.  “Her demi-toilette will keep me another hour out of my bed, and I get no sleep after dinner now among you. Tell her to-morrow at breakfast time will do.”

CHAPTER IV.

DAVID DODD was so radiant and happy for a day or two that Eve had not the heart to throw cold water on him again.

Three days elapsed, and no invitation to Font Abbey; on this his happiness cooled of itself.  But when day after day rolled by, and no Font Abbey, he was dashed, uneasy, and, above all, perplexed.  What could be the reason?  Had he, with his rough ways, offended her?  Had she been too dignified to resent it at the time?  Was he never to go to Font Abbey again?  Eve’s first feeling was unmixed satisfaction.  We have seen already that she expected no good from this rash attachment.  For a single moment her influence and reasons had seemed to wean David from it; but his violent agitation and joy at two words of kindly curiosity from Miss Fountain, and the instant unreasonable revival of love and hope, showed the strange power she had acquired over him.  It made Eve tremble.

But now the Fountains were aiding her to cure this folly.  She had read them right, had described them to David aright.  A wind of caprice had carried him and her into Font Abbey; another such wind was carrying them out.  No event had happened.  Mr. and Miss Fountain had been seen more than once in the village of late.  “They have dropped us, and thank Heaven!” said Eve, in her idiomatic way.

She pitied David deeply, and was kinder and kinder to him now, to show him she felt for him; but she never mentioned the Font Abbey people to him either to praise or blame them, though it was all she could do to suppress her satisfaction at the turn their insolent caprice had taken.

That satisfaction was soon clouded.  This time, instead of rousing himself and his pride, David sank into a moody despondency; varied by occasional fretfulness.  His appetite went, and his bright color, and his elastic step.  This silent sadness was so new in him, such a contrast to his natural temperature, large, genial, and ever cheerful, that Eve could not bear it.  “I must shake him out of this, at all hazards,” thought she:  yet she put off the experiment, and put it off, partly in hopes that David would speak first, partly because she saw the wound she would probe was deep, and she winced beforehand for her patient.