You will be ill, and break down.' 'I have, it is true, been up a little late this last week,' he said

cheerfully. 'In fact, I couldn't tear myself away from the equatorial;

it is such a wonderful possession that it keeps me there till daylight.

But what does that matter, now I have made the discovery?' 'Ah, it _does_ matter! Now, promise me--I insist--that you will not

commit such imprudences again; for what should I do if my Astronomer

Royal were to die?' She laughed, but far too apprehensively to be effective as a display of

levity.

They parted, and he went home to write out his paper. He promised to

call as soon as his discovery was in print. Then they waited for the

result.

Advertisement..

It is impossible to describe the tremulous state of Lady Constantine

during the interval. The warm interest she took in Swithin St.

Cleeve--many would have said dangerously warm interest--made his hopes

her hopes; and though she sometimes admitted to herself that great

allowance was requisite for the overweening confidence of youth in the

future, she permitted herself to be blinded to probabilities for the

pleasure of sharing his dreams. It seemed not unreasonable to suppose

the present hour to be the beginning of realization to her darling wish

that this young man should become famous. He had worked hard, and why

should he not be famous early? His very simplicity in mundane affairs

afforded a strong presumption that in things celestial he might be wise.

To obtain support for this hypothesis she had only to think over the

lives of many eminent astronomers.

She waited feverishly for the flourish of trumpets from afar, by which

she expected the announcement of his discovery to be greeted. Knowing

that immediate intelligence of the outburst would be brought to her by

himself, she watched from the windows of the Great House each morning for

a sight of his figure hastening down the glade.

But he did not come.

A long array of wet days passed their dreary shapes before her, and made

the waiting still more tedious. On one of these occasions she ran across

to the tower, at the risk of a severe cold. The door was locked.

Two days after she went again. The door was locked still. But this was

only to be expected in such weather. Yet she would have gone on to his

house, had there not been one reason too many against such precipitancy.

As astronomer and astronomer there was no harm in their meetings; but as

woman and man she feared them.

Ten days passed without a sight of him; ten blurred and dreary days,

during which the whole landscape dripped like a mop; the park trees

swabbed the gravel from the drive, while the sky was a zinc-coloured

archi-vault of immovable cloud. It seemed as if the whole science of

astronomy had never been real, and that the heavenly bodies, with their

motions, were as theoretical as the lines and circles of a bygone

mathematical problem.




Most Popular