Now that he was actually within her coasts again Swithin felt a little
more strongly the influence of the past and Viviette than he had been
accustomed to do for the last two or three years. During the night he
felt half sorry that he had not marched off to the Great House to see
her, regardless of the time of day. If she really nourished for him any
particle of her old affection it had been the cruellest thing not to
call. A few questions that he put concerning her to his grandmother
elicited that Lady Constantine had no friends about her--not even her
brother--and that her health had not been so good since her return from
Melchester as formerly. Still, this proved nothing as to the state of
her heart, and as she had kept a dead silence since the Bishop's death it
was quite possible that she would meet him with that cold repressive tone
and manner which experienced women know so well how to put on when they
wish to intimate to the long-lost lover that old episodes are to be taken
as forgotten.
The next morning he prepared to call, if only on the ground of old
acquaintance, for Swithin was too straightforward to ascertain anything
indirectly. It was rather too early for this purpose when he went out
from his grandmother's garden-gate, after breakfast, and he waited in the
garden. While he lingered his eye fell on Rings-Hill Speer.
It appeared dark, for a moment, against the blue sky behind it; then the
fleeting cloud which shadowed it passed on, and the face of the column
brightened into such luminousness that the sky behind sank to the
complexion of a dark foil.
'Surely somebody is on the column,' he said to himself, after gazing at
it awhile.
Instead of going straight to the Great House he deviated through the
insulating field, now sown with turnips, which surrounded the plantation
on Rings-Hill. By the time that he plunged under the trees he was still
more certain that somebody was on the tower. He crept up to the base
with proprietary curiosity, for the spot seemed again like his own.
The path still remained much as formerly, but the nook in which the cabin
had stood was covered with undergrowth. Swithin entered the door of the
tower, ascended the staircase about half-way on tip-toe, and listened,
for he did not wish to intrude on the top if any stranger were there.
The hollow spiral, as he knew from old experience, would bring down to his
ears the slightest sound from above; and it now revealed to him the words
of a duologue in progress at the summit of the tower.