But Lady Coryston shook her head.
"Thank you--I don't want anything."
* * * * *
So--for Marcia--there was nothing to be done with these weary hours--but
wait and think and weep! She went back to her own sitting-room, and
lingeringly put Newbury's letters together, in a packet, which she sealed;
in case--well, in case--nothing came of her letter of the morning. They had
been engaged not quite a month. Although they had met almost every day, yet
there were many letters from him; letters of which she felt anew the power
and beauty as she reread them. Yet from that power and beauty, the natural
expression of his character, she stood further off now than when she had
first known him. The mystery indeed in which her nascent love had wrapped
him had dropped away. She knew him better, she respected him infinitely;
and all the time--strangely, inexplicably--love had been, not growing, but
withering.
Meanwhile, into all her thoughts about herself and Newbury there rushed at
recurrent intervals the memory, the overwhelming memory, of her last sight
of John and Alice Betts. That gray face in the summer dusk, beyond the
window, haunted her; and the memory of those arms which had clung about her
waist.
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