And so she seemed now to be walking to him down
the years, the light and shade of old memories and new hopes
playing variously on her, and each step giving him the
vision of a different grace. She did not waver or turn
aside; he knew she would come straight to where he stood;
but something in her eyes said "Wait", and again he obeyed
and waited.
On the fourth day an unexpected event threw out his
calculations. Summoned to town by the arrival in England of
her husband's mother, she left without giving Darrow the
chance he had counted on, and he cursed himself for a
dilatory blunderer. Still, his disappointment was tempered
by the certainty of being with her again before she left for
France; and they did in fact see each other in London.
There, however, the atmosphere had changed with the
conditions. He could not say that she avoided him, or even
that she was a shade less glad to see him; but she was beset
by family duties and, as he thought, a little too readily
resigned to them.
The Marquise de Chantelle, as Darrow soon perceived, had the
same mild formidableness as the late Mr. Leath: a sort of
insistent self-effacement before which every one about her
gave way. It was perhaps the shadow of this lady's
presence--pervasive even during her actual brief eclipses--
that subdued and silenced Mrs. Leath. The latter was,
moreover, preoccupied about her stepson, who, soon after
receiving his degree at Harvard, had been rescued from a
stormy love-affair, and finally, after some months of
troubled drifting, had yielded to his step-mother's counsel
and gone up to Oxford for a year of supplementary study.
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