BOOK THE FOURTH: Somerset, Dare And De Stancy
There was no part of Paula's journey in which Somerset did not think of her. He
imagined her in the hotel at Havre, in her brief rest at Paris; her drive past the
Place de la Bastille to the Boulevart Mazas to take the train for Lyons; her
tedious progress through the dark of a winter night till she crossed the isothermal
line which told of the beginning of a southern atmosphere, and onwards to the
ancient blue sea.
Thus, between the hours devoted to architecture, he passed the next three days.
One morning he set himself, by the help of John, to practise on the telegraph
instrument, expecting a message. But though he watched the machine at every
opportunity, or kept some other person on the alert in its neighbourhood, no
message arrived to gratify him till after the lapse of nearly a fortnight. Then she
spoke from her new habitation nine hundred miles away, in these meagre
words:--
'Are settled at the address given. Can now attend to any inquiry about the
building.'
The pointed implication that she could attend to inquiries about nothing else,
breathed of the veritable Paula so distinctly that he could forgive its sauciness.
His reply was soon despatched:--
'Will write particulars of our progress. Always the same.'
The last three words formed the sentimental appendage which she had assured
him she could tolerate, and which he hoped she might desire.
He spent the remainder of the day in making a little sketch to show what had
been done in the castle since her departure. This he despatched with a letter of
explanation ending in a paragraph of a different tenor:--
'I have demonstrated our progress as well as I could; but another subject has
been in my mind, even whilst writing the former. Ask yourself if you use me well
in keeping me a fortnight before you so much as say that you have arrived? The
one thing that reconciled me to your departure was the thought that I should hear
early from you: my idea of being able to submit to your absence was based
entirely upon that.
'But I have resolved not to be out of humour, and to believe that your scheme of
reserve is not unreasonable; neither do I quarrel with your injunction to keep
silence to all relatives. I do not know anything I can say to show you more plainly
my acquiescence in your wish "not to go too far" (in short, to keep yourself dear--
by dear I mean not cheap--you have been dear in the other sense a long time, as
