“You’d better look out how you behave while I am away,” he said.  “I’d kick up a row in a minute, only you’re such a lump of ice no man would bother with you.”  Then, in a passion:  “I wish to God they would, and take you off, so I could get some one of more use to me!” He was surprised that I did not wish him to kiss me ten minutes after this.

And now he has gone, and for six months, at any rate, I shall be free from his companionship.

When he returns things shall be started on a different footing.

I came down to Ledstone by myself yesterday.  I have no plans.  Perhaps I shall stay here until Christmas, when I am to go to Bournemouth to my mother-in-law.

The house seems more than ever big and hideously oppressive.  I must find some interest.  The old numbness has returned with double force.  I take up a book and put it down again.  I roam from one room to another.  I am restless and rebellious—­rebellious with fate.

I know grandmamma would be angry with me could she come back to me now.  She would say I was behaving with the want of self-control of a common person, and not as one of our race.  Well, perhaps she is right.  I shall go to the cottage and see Hephzibah and give myself a shock.  That may do me good.

I never willingly let myself think of Antony, but unconsciously my thoughts are always turning to the evening in the fog.  I do not know where he is.  He may be at Dane Mount, only these few miles off, and yet we must not meet.

I wonder if Ambrosine Eustasie de Calincourt had ever a lover.  Probably—­and she would have listened to him, being of her time.

Oh, what is this quality in me that makes me as I am—­a flabby thing, with strength enough to push away all I desire in life, to keep untarnished my idea of honor, and yet too weak to tear the matter from my mind once I have done so?

How grandmamma would despise me!

I think of the Princess’s answer to the riddle of the nineteenth day in A Digit of the Moon.  I am this middle thing, and it is only the very bad and very good that achieve peace and perfect happiness.

“Come, Roy, away with us!  Let us run, as we used to do last year when we were young.  Let us shake ourselves and laugh.  No more of this unworthy repining!  There are some in the world that have but one eye, and some but one leg, and they cannot see or run, and are worse off than we are, my friend.  So think of that, and don’t lift your lip at me, and tell me it is cold, and you want to stay by the fire.”

All the blinds were down in the front of the cottage as I unlatched the garden gate—­the gate I had passed through last following grandmamma’s coffin to her grave.  I ran round to the back door and soon found Hephzibah.

Her joy was great to see me there, her only regret being she had not known I was coming that she might have had the fires lit.  They were all laid, and she soon put a match to them.