n
to happen, not by his will, but affecting him deeply. What would come of
it he did not know; that it would end in a day or two, that it would be
only an episode and leave no permanent mark seemed now almost
impossible; it was fraught with something bigger than that.

But with what? He had no reasoned idea; he was unable to reason. He was
passive in the hands of the feelings, the impressions, the fancies that
laid hold of him. Addie Tristram's death had moved him strangely; then
came that hardly natural, eerily fascinating reminiscence--no, it was
more than that--that re-embodiment or resurrection of her in the girl
who moved and talked and sat like her, who had her ways though not her
face, her eyes set in another frame, her voice renewed in youthful
richness, the very turns of her head, even her old trick of sticking out
her foot. He scowled sometimes, he was surprised into laughter
sometimes; at another moment he would rebel against the malicious Power
that seemed to be having a joke with him; for the most part he looked,
and looked, and looked, unwilling to miss a single one of the
characteristic touches which had been Addie Tristram's belongings and
which he had never expected to see again after her spirit had passed
away. And the outcome of all his looking was still the same as the
effect of his first impression on the evening before the funeral--a sort
of despair. A thing was there which he did not know how to deal with.

And she was so happy, so absurdly happy. She had soon found that he
expected no conventional solemnity; he laughed himself at the idea of
Addie Tristram wanting people to pull long faces, and keep them long
when pulled, because she had laid her burden down and was at peace.
Cecily found she might be merry, and merry she was. A new life had come
to her too, a life of river and trees and meadows; deeper than that, a
life of beauty about her. She absorbed it with a native thirst. There
was plenty of it, and she had been starved so long. She seized on Blent
and enjoyed it to the full. She enjoyed Harry too, laughing now when he
stared at her and making him laugh, yet herself noting all his ways, his
pride, his little lordlinesses--these grew dear to her--his air of
owning the countryside, and making no secret of her own pleasure in
being part of the family and in living in the house that owned the
countryside. It is to be feared that Mr Gainsborough and his chill were
rather neglected, but he got