The next day the whole population of the place surged in and out of the Cottage, full of regrets and wonders. ‘Are you really going?’ the ladies said, ‘so soon? I suppose it was quite a sudden idea? And how delightful for you!—but you can’t expect us to be pleased. On the contrary, we are all inconsolable. I don’t know what we shall do without you. How long do you intend to stay away?’

‘Nothing is settled,’ said Mrs. Anderson, blandly. ‘We are leaving ourselves quite free. I think it is much better not to be hampered by any fixed time for return.’

‘Oh, much better!’ said the chorus. ‘It is such a bore generally; just when one is beginning to know people, and to enjoy oneself, one has to pack up and go away; but there are few people, of course, who are so free as you are, dear Mrs. Anderson—you have no duty to call you back. And then you know the Continent so well, and how to travel, and all about it. How I envy you! But it will be such a loss for us. I don’t know what we shall do all the Summer through without you and dear Ombra and Kate. All our pic-nics, and our water-parties, and our croquet, and everything—I don’t know what we shall do——’

‘I suppose you will let the Cottage for the summer?’ said Mrs. Eldridge, who was of a practical mind; ‘and I hope nice people may come. That will be always some consolation for the rest of us; and we cannot grudge our friends their holiday, can we?’ she added, with fine professional feeling, reading a mild lesson to her parishioners, to which everybody replied, with a flutter of protestation, ‘Oh, of course not, of course not!’

Mr. Courtenay assisted at the little ceremonial. He sat all the afternoon in an easy-chair by the window, noting everything with a smile. The tea-table was in the opposite corner, and from four till six there was little cessation in the talk, and in the distribution of cups of tea. He sat and looked on, making various sardonic remarks to himself. Partly by chance, and partly by intention, he had drawn his chair close to that of Ombra, who interested him. He was anxious to understand this member of the household, who gave Kate no caresses, who did nothing to conciliate or please her, but rather spoke sharply to her when she spoke at all. He set this down frankly and openly as jealousy, and determined to be at the bottom of it. Ombra was not a ‘locust.’ She was much more like a secret enemy. He made up his mind that there was some mischief between them, and that Ombra hated the girl whom everybody else, from interested motives, pretended to love; therefore, he tried to talk to her, first, because her gloom amused him, and second, that he might have a chance of finding something out.

‘I have been under a strange delusion,’ he said. ‘I thought there was but a very small population in the Isle of Wight.’

‘Indeed, I don’t know what the number is,’ said Ombra.

‘I should say it must be legion. The room has been three times filled, and still the cry is, they come! And yet I understand you live very quietly, and this is an out-of-the-way place. Places which are in the way must have much more of it. It seems to be that Mayfair is less gay.’

‘I don’t know Mayfair.’

‘Then you have lived always in the country,’ said Mr. Courtenay, blandly. This roused Ombra. She could have borne a graver imputation better, but to be considered a mere rustic, a girl who knew nothing!——

‘On the contrary, I have lived very little in the country,’ she said, with a tone of irritation. ‘But then the towns I have lived in have belonged to a different kind of society than that which, I suppose, you meet with in Mayfair. I have lived in Madrid, Lisbon, Genoa, and Florence——’

‘Ah! in your father’s time,’ said Mr. Courtenay, gently. And the sound of his voice seemed to say to Ombra, ‘In the Consul’s time! Yes, to be sure. Just the sort of places he would be sure to live in.’ Which exasperated her more than she dared show.

‘Yes, that was our happy time!’ she cried, hotly. ‘The time when we were free of all interference. My father was honoured and loved by everybody.’

‘Oh! I don’t doubt it, I don’t doubt it,’ said Mr. Courtenay, hurriedly, for she looked very much as if she might be going to cry. ‘Spain is very interesting, and so is Italy. It will be pleasant for you to go back.’

‘I don’t think it will,’ she said, bluntly. ‘Things will be so different.’ And then, after a pause, she added, with nervous haste, ‘Kate may like it, perhaps, but not I.’

Mr. Courtenay thought it best to pause. He had no wish to be made a confidant, or to have Ombra’s grievances against Kate poured into his ears. He leaned back in his chair, and watched with grim amusement while the visitors went and came. Mr. Sugden had come in while he had been talking, and was now to be seen standing like a tall shadow by the other side of the window, looking down upon Ombra; and a nervous expectation had become visible in her, which caught Mr. Courtenay’s eye. She did not look up when the door opened, but, on the contrary, kept her eyes fixed on the work she held in her hand with a rigidity which betrayed her more than curiosity would have done. She would not look up, but she listened with a hot, hectic flush on the upper part of her cheeks, just under her drooped eyelids, holding her breath, and sitting motionless in the suspense which devoured her. The needle shook in her hand, and all the efforts she made to keep it steady did but reveal the more the excitement of all her nerves. Mr. Courtenay watched her with growing curiosity; he was not sympathetic; but it was something new to him and entertaining, and he watched as if he had been at a theatre. He did not mean to be cruel; it was to him like a child’s fit of pouting. It was something about love, no doubt, he said to himself. Poor little fool! Somebody had interfered with her love—her last plaything; perhaps Kate, who looked very capable of doing mischief in such matters; and how unhappy she was making herself about nothing at all!

At last the anxiety came to a sudden stop; the hand gave one jerk more violent than before; the eyes shot out a sudden gleam, and then Ombra was suddenly, significantly still. Mr. Courtenay looked up, and saw that two young men had come into the room, so much like each other that he was startled, and did not know what to make of it. As he looked up, with an incipient smile on his face, he caught the eye of the tall Curate on the other side of the window, who was looking at him threateningly. ‘Good heavens! what have I done?’ said Mr. Courtenay to himself, much amazed. ‘I have not fallen in love with the irresistible Ombra!’ He was still more entertained when he discovered that the look which he had thus intercepted was on its way to the new comers, whom Ombra did not look at, but whose coming had affected her so strangely. Here was an entire drama in the smallest possible space. An agitated maiden on the eve of parting with her lover; a second jealous lover looking on. ‘Thank heaven it is not Kate!’ Mr. Courtenay said from the bottom of his heart. The sight of this little scene made him feel more and more the danger from which he had escaped. He had escaped it, but only by a hair’s-breadth; and, thank the kind fates, was looking on with amusement at a story which did not concern him; not with dismay and consternation at a private embarrassment and difficulty of his own. This sense of a hairbreadth escape gave the little spectacle zest. He looked on with genuine amusement, like a true critic, delighted with the show of human emotion which was taking place before his eyes.

‘Who are these two young fellows?’ he asked Ombra, determined to have the whole advantage of the situation, and draw her out to the utmost of his power.

‘What two?’ she said, looking up suddenly, with a dull red flush on her cheek and a choked voice. ‘Oh! they are Mr. Hardwick and Mr. Eldridge; two—gentlemen—mamma knows.’

They were both talking to Kate, standing one on either side of her in the middle of the room. Ombra gave them a long intent look, with the colour deepening in her face, and the breath coming quick from her lips. She took in the group in every detail, as if it had been drawn in lines of fire. How unconscious Kate looked standing there, talking easily, in all the freedom of her unawakened youth. ‘Heaven be praised!’ thought Mr. Courtenay once more, pious for the first time in his life.

‘What! not brothers? What a strange likeness, then!’ he said, tranquilly. ‘I suppose one of them is young Hardwick, from Langton-Courtenay, whom Kate knew at home. He is a parson, like his father, I suppose?’

‘No,’ said Ombra, dropping her eyes once more upon her work.

‘Not a parson? That is odd, for the elder son, I know, has gone to the Bar. I suppose he has relations here? Kate and he have met before?’

‘Yes.’

It was all that Ombra could say; but in her heart she added, ‘Always Kate—Kate knew him—Kate has met him! Is there nobody, then, but Kate in the world to be considered. They think so too.’

The old man, for the first time, had a little pity. He asked no more questions, seeing that she was past all power of answering them; and half in sympathy, half in curiosity, drew his chair back a little, and left the new-comers room to approach. When they did so, after some minutes, Ombra’s feverish colour suddenly forsook her cheeks, and she grew very pale. Bertie Eldridge was the first to speak. He came up with a little air of deprecation and humility, which Mr. Courtenay, not knowing the fin mot of the enigma, did not understand.

‘I am so sorry to hear you are going away,’ he said. ‘Is it not very sudden, Miss Anderson? You did not speak of it on Wednesday, I think.’

‘Did I see you on Wednesday?’ said Ombra. ‘Oh! I beg your pardon, I know you were here; but I did not think we had any talk.’

‘A little, I believe,’ said the young man, colouring. His self-possession seemed to fail him, which was amazing to Mr. Courtenay, for the young men of the period do not often fail in self-possession. He got confused, spoke low, and faltered something about knowing he had no right to be told.

‘No,’ she replied, with nervous colour and a flash of sudden pride; ‘out of our own little cottage I do not know anyone who has a right to be consulted—or cares either,’ she added, in an undertone.

‘Miss Anderson, you cannot think that!’

‘Ah, but I do!’ Then there was a little pause; and after some moments, Ombra resumed: ‘Kate’s movements are important to many people. She will be a great lady, and entitled to have her comings and goings recorded in the newspapers; but we have no such claim upon the public interest. It does not matter to any one, so far as I know, whether we go or stay.’

A silence again. Ombra bent once more over her work, and her needle flew through it, working as if for a wager. The other Bertie, who was behind, had been moving about, in mere idleness, the books on Ombra’s writing-table. At him she suddenly looked up with a smile—

‘Please, Mr. Hardwick! all my poor papers and books which I have just been putting in order—don’t scatter them all over the table again.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, looking up. He had borne the air of the stage-confidant, till that moment, in Mr. Courtenay’s eyes, which were those of a connoisseur in such matters. But now his belief on this subject was shaken. When he glanced up and saw the look which was exchanged by the two, and the gloom with which Mr. Sugden was regarding both, a mist seemed to roll away from the scene. How different the girl’s aspect was now!—soft with a dewy brightness in her eyes, and a voice that trembled with some concealed agitation; and there was a glow upon Bertie’s face, which made him handsomer. ‘My cousins are breaking their hearts over your going,’ he said.

‘Oh, no fear of their hearts!’ said Ombra, lightly; ‘they will mend. If the Cottage is let, the new tenants will probably be gayer people than we are, and do more to amuse their neighbours. And if we come back——’

‘If?’ said the young man.

‘Nothing is certain, I suppose, in this world—or, at least, so people say.’

‘It is very true,’ said Mr. Courtenay. ‘It is seldom a young lady is so philosophical—but, as you say, if you come back in a year, the chances are you will find your place filled up, and your friends changed.’

Ombra turned upon him with sparks of fire suddenly flashing from her eyes. Philosopher, indeed!—say termagant, rather.

‘It is vile and wretched and horrible to say so!’ she cried; ‘but I suppose it is true.’

And all this time the tall Curate never took his eyes off the group, but stood still and listened and watched. Mr. Courtenay began to feel very uncomfortable. The scene was deadly real, and not as amusing as he had hoped.