The disconnected query seemed to be subjoined to disperse the crude effect of what had gone before.
'I hardly know,' murmured Christopher. 'I suppose I shall not call here again.'
Whilst they were silent somebody entered the room softly, and they turned to discover Picotee.
'Come here, Picotee,' said Ethelberta.
Picotee came with an abashed bearing to where the other two were standing, and looked down steadfastly.
'Mr. Julian is going away,' she continued, with determined firmness.
'He will not see us again for a long time.' And Ethelberta added, in a lower tone, though still in the unflinching manner of one who had set herself to say a thing, and would say it--'He is not to be definitely engaged to me any longer. We are not thinking of marrying, you know, Picotee. It is best that we should not.'
'Perhaps it is,' said Christopher hurriedly, taking up his hat.
'Let me now wish you good-bye; and, of course, you will always know where I am, and how to find me.'
It was a tender time. He inclined forward that Ethelberta might give him her hand, which she did; whereupon their eyes met.
Mastered by an impelling instinct she had not reckoned with, Ethelberta presented her cheek. Christopher kissed it faintly.
Tears were in Ethelberta's eyes now, and she was heartfull of many emotions. Placing her arm round Picotee's waist, who had never lifted her eyes from the carpet, she drew the slight girl forward, and whispered quickly to him--'Kiss her, too. She is my sister, and I am yours.'
It seemed all right and natural to their respective moods and the tone of the moment that free old Wessex manners should prevail, and Christopher stooped and dropped upon Picotee's cheek likewise such a farewell kiss as he had imprinted upon Ethelberta's.
'Care for us both equally!' said Ethelberta.
'I will,' said Christopher, scarcely knowing what he said.
When he had reached the door of the room, he looked back and saw the two sisters standing as he had left them, and equally tearful.
Ethelberta at once said, in a last futile struggle against letting him go altogether, and with thoughts of her sister's heart:
'I think that Picotee might correspond with Faith; don't you, Mr.
Julian?'
'My sister would much like to do so,' said he.
'And you would like it too, would you not, Picotee?'
'O yes,' she replied. 'And I can tell them all about you.'
'Then it shall be so, if Miss Julian will.' She spoke in a settled way, as if something intended had been set in train; and Christopher having promised for his sister, he went out of the house with a parting smile of misgiving.
He could scarcely believe as he walked along that those late words, yet hanging in his ears, had really been spoken, that still visible scene enacted. He could not even recollect for a minute or two how the final result had been produced. Did he himself first enter upon the long-looming theme, or did she? Christopher had been so nervously alive to the urgency of setting before the hard-striving woman a clear outline of himself, his surroundings and his fears, that he fancied the main impulse to this consummation had been his, notwithstanding that a faint initiative had come from Ethelberta.
All had completed itself quickly, unceremoniously, and easily.
Ethelberta had let him go a second time; yet on foregoing mornings and evenings, when contemplating the necessity of some such explanation, it had seemed that nothing less than Atlantean force could overpower their mutual gravitation towards each other.
