and ritual, but the innermost
veil of her heart was never raised; all her friends felt that, though
they could not easily have explained in what way they became conscious
of this reserve, she seemed so thoroughly open, not to say so shallow.
She left The Firs to return to town, and thence in a week or two went to
Cowes, a favourite abode of her mother's.

The next day, Emily also left, journeying to London on her way to the
north, Wilfrid and she had no second meeting; their parting was formal,
in the family circle. Mr. Athel displayed even more than his usual
urbanity; Mrs. Rossall was genuinely gracious; the twins made many
promises to write from Switzerland. Emily was self-possessed, but
Wilfrid read in her face that she was going through an ordeal. He felt
the folly of his first proposal, that she should play a part before Mrs.
Rossall through the winter months. He decided, moreover, that no time
should be lost in making the necessary disclosure to his father.
Naturally it would be an anxious time with Emily till she had news from
him. She had asked him to direct letters to the Dunfield post office,
not to her home; it was better so for the present.

Wilfrid, though anything but weakly nervous, was impatient of suspense,
and, in face of a situation like the present, suffered from the
excitability of an imaginative temperament. He had by no means yet
outgrown the mood which, when he was a boy, made the anticipation of any
delight a physical illness. In an essentially feeble nature this extreme
sensibility is fatal to sane achievement; in Wilfrid it merely enforced
the vigour of his will. As a child he used to exclaim that he _could_
not wait; at present he was apt to say that he would not. He did not, in
very truth, anticipate difficulties with his father, his conviction of
the latter's reasonableness being strongly supported by immense
confidence in his own powers of putting a case incontrovertibly. As he
had said to Emily, he could scarcely allow that deep affection for his
father dwelt within him, nor did the nature of the case permit him to
feel exactly reverent; these stronger emotions were reserved for the
memory of the parent who was long dead. He thought of his father with
warm friendliness, that temper which is consistent with clear perception
of faults and foibles, which makes of them, indeed, an occasion for the
added kindliness of indulgence, and which, on the other hand, leaves
perfect freedom in judgme