They had been in Rome at Easter, and Fanny was married in the August vacation.  She wrote a garrulous letter to Miss Winchelsea, describing her home-coming and the astonishing arrangements of their “teeny, weeny” little house.  Mr. Se’noks was now beginning to assume a refinement in Miss Winchelsea’s memory out of all proportion to the facts of the case, and she tried in vain to imagine his cultured greatness in a “teeny weeny” little house.  “Am busy enamelling a cosy corner,” said Fanny, sprawling to the end of her third sheet, “so excuse more.”  Miss Winchelsea answered in her best style, gently poking fun at Fanny’s arrangements, and hoping intensely that Mr. Se’noks might see the letter.  Only this hope enabled her to write at all, answering not only that letter but one in November and one at Christmas.

The two latter communications contained urgent invitations for her to come to Steely Bank on a visit during the Christmas holidays.  She tried to think that he had told her to ask that, but it was too much like Fanny’s opulent good-nature.  She could not but believe that he must be sick of his blunder by this time; and she had more than a hope that he would presently write her a letter beginning “Dear Friend.”  Something subtly tragic in the separation was a great support to her, a sad misunderstanding.  To have been jilted would have been intolerable.  But he never wrote that letter beginning “Dear Friend.”

For two years Miss Winchelsea could not go to see her friends, in spite of the reiterated invitations of Mrs. Sevenoaks—­it became full Sevenoaks in the second year.  Then one day near the Easter rest she felt lonely and without a soul to understand her in the world, and her mind ran once more on what is called Platonic friendship.  Fanny was clearly happy and busy in her new sphere of domesticity, but no doubt he had his lonely hours.  Did he ever think of those days in Rome, gone now beyond recalling?  No one had understood her as he had done; no one in all the world.  It would be a sort of melancholy pleasure to talk to him again, and what harm could it do?  Why should she deny herself?  That night she wrote a sonnet, all but the last two lines of the octave—­which would not come; and the next day she composed a graceful little note to tell Fanny she was coming down.

And so she saw him again.

Even at the first encounter it was evident he had changed; he seemed stouter and less nervous, and it speedily appeared that his conversation had already lost much of its old delicacy.  There even seemed a justification for Helen’s description of weakness in his face—­in certain lights it was weak.  He seemed busy and preoccupied about his affairs, and almost under the impression that Miss Winchelsea had come for the sake of Fanny.  He discussed his dinner with Fanny in an intelligent way.  They only had one good long talk together, and that came to nothing.  He did not refer to Rome, and spent some time abusing a man who had stolen an idea he had had for a text-book.  It did not seem a very wonderful idea to Miss Winchelsea.  She discovered he had forgotten the names of more than half the painters whose work they had rejoiced over in Florence.