第17章

So do I,piped the other like a rather more melancholy bullfinch.Mamma cant play with us so nicely as you do.I dont think she ever learnt playing when she was little.When shall we come to see you?

As soon as you like,dears.

And sleep at your house all night?Thats what I mean by coming to see you.I dont care to see people with hats and bonnets on,and all standing up and walking about.

As soon as we can get mammas permission you shall come and stay as long as ever you like.Good-bye!

The prisoners were then led off,Elfride again turning her attention to her guest,whom she had left standing at the remote end of the gallery.On looking around for him he was nowhere to be seen.Elfride stepped down to the library,thinking he might have rejoined her father there.But Mr.Swancourt,now cheerfully illuminated by a pair of candles,was still alone,untying packets of letters and papers,and tying them up again.

As Elfride did not stand on a sufficiently intimate footing with the object of her interest to justify her,as a proper young lady,to commence the active search for him that youthful impulsiveness prompted,and as,nevertheless,for a nascent reason connected with those divinely cut lips of his,she did not like him to be absent from her side,she wandered desultorily back to the oak staircase,pouting and casting her eyes about in hope of discerning his boyish figure.

Though daylight still prevailed in the rooms,the corridors were in a depth of shadow--chill,sad,and silent;and it was only by looking along them towards light spaces beyond that anything or anybody could be discerned therein.One of these light spots she found to be caused by a side-door with glass panels in the upper part.Elfride opened it,and found herself confronting a secondary or inner lawn,separated from the principal lawn front by a shrubbery.

And now she saw a perplexing sight.At right angles to the face of the wing she had emerged from,and within a few feet of the door,jutted out another wing of the mansion,lower and with less architectural character.Immediately opposite to her,in the wall of this wing,was a large broad window,having its blind drawn down,and illuminated by a light in the room it screened.

On the blind was a shadow from somebody close inside it--a person in profile.The profile was unmistakably that of Stephen.It was just possible to see that his arms were uplifted,and that his hands held an article of some kind.Then another shadow appeared--also in profile--and came close to him.This was the shadow of a woman.She turned her back towards Stephen:he lifted and held out what now proved to be a shawl or mantle--placed it carefully--so carefully--round the lady;disappeared;reappeared in her front--fastened the mantle.Did he then kiss her?Surely not.

Yet the motion might have been a kiss.Then both shadows swelled to colossal dimensions--grew distorted--vanished.

Two minutes elapsed.

Ah,Miss Swancourt!I am so glad to find you.I was looking for you,said a voice at her elbow--Stephens voice.She stepped into the passage.

Do you know any of the members of this establishment?said she.

Not a single one:how should I?he replied.