elland, and would shortly go from England.

She became aware of it by a note that he posted to her on his way through
Warborne. There was much evidence of haste in the note, and something of
reserve. The latter she could not understand, but it might have been
obvious enough if she had considered.

On the morning of his departure he had sat on the edge of his bed, the
sunlight streaming through the early mist, the house-martens scratching
the back of the ceiling over his head as they scrambled out from the roof
for their day's gnat-chasing, the thrushes cracking snails on the garden
stones outside with the noisiness of little smiths at work on little
anvils. The sun, in sending its rods of yellow fire into his room, sent,
as he suddenly thought, mental illumination with it. For the first time,
as he sat there, it had crossed his mind that Viviette might have reasons
for this separation which he knew not of. There might be family
reasons--mysterious blood necessities which are said to rule members of
old musty-mansioned families, and are unknown to other classes of
society--and they may have been just now brought before her by her
brother Louis on the condition that they were religiously concealed.

The idea that some family skeleton, like those he had read of in memoirs,
had been unearthed by Louis, and held before her terrified understanding
as a matter which rendered Swithin's departure, and the neutralization of
the marriage, no less indispensable to them than it was an advantage to
himself, seemed a very plausible one to Swithin just now. Viviette might
have taken Louis into her confidence at last, for the sake of his
brotherly advice. Swithin knew that of her own heart she would never
wish to get rid of him; but coerced by Louis, might she not have grown to
entertain views of its expediency? Events made such a supposition on St.
Cleeve's part as natural as it was inaccurate, and, conjoined with his
own excitement at the thought of seeing a new heaven overhead, influenced
him to write but the briefest and most hurried final note to her, in
which he fully obeyed her sensitive request that he would omit all
reference to his plans. These at the last moment had been modified to
fall in with the winter expedition formerly mentioned, to observe the
Transit of Venus at a remote southern station.

The business being done, and himself fairly plunged into the
preliminaries of an important scientific pilgrimage, Swit