Philip Re-enters
The next morning was very wet,—the sort
of morning on which male neighbors who have no imperative
occupation at home are likely to pay their fair friends
an illimitable visit. The rain, which has been
endurable enough for the walk or ride one way, is sure
to become so heavy, and at the same time so certain
to clear up by and by, that nothing but an open quarrel
can abbreviate the visit; latent detestation will
not do at all. And if people happen to be lovers,
what can be so delightful, in England, as a rainy morning?
English sunshine is dubious; bonnets are never quite
secure; and if you sit down on the grass, it may lead
to catarrhs. But the rain is to be depended on.
You gallop through it in a mackintosh, and presently
find yourself in the seat you like best,—a
little above or a little below the one on which your
goddess sits (it is the same thing to the metaphysical
mind, and that is the reason why women are at once
worshipped and looked down upon), with a satisfactory
confidence that there will be no lady-callers.
“Stephen will come earlier this morning, I know,”
said Lucy; “he always does when it’s rainy.”
Maggie made no answer. She was angry with Stephen;
she began to think she should dislike him; and if
it had not been for the rain, she would have gone
to her aunt Glegg’s this morning, and so have
avoided him altogether. As it was, she must find
some reason for remaining out of the room with her
mother.
But Stephen did not come earlier, and there was another
visitor—a nearer neighbor—who
preceded him. When Philip entered the room, he
was going merely to bow to Maggie, feeling that their
acquaintance was a secret which he was bound not to
betray; but when she advanced toward him and put out
her hand, he guessed at once that Lucy had been taken
into her confidence. It was a moment of some agitation
to both, though Philip had spent many hours in preparing
for it; but like all persons who have passed through
life with little expectation of sympathy, he seldom
lost his self-control, and shrank with the most sensitive
pride from any noticeable betrayal of emotion.
A little extra paleness, a little tension of the nostril
when he spoke, and the voice pitched in rather a higher
key, that to strangers would seem expressive of cold
indifference, were all the signs Philip usually gave
of an inward drama that was not without its fierceness.
But Maggie, who had little more power of concealing
the impressions made upon her than if she had been
constructed of musical strings, felt her eyes getting
larger with tears as they took each other’s hands
in silence. They were not painful tears; they
had rather something of the same origin as the tears
women and children shed when they have found some
protection to cling to and look back on the threatened
danger. For Philip, who a little while ago was
associated continually in Maggie’s mind with
