But even zeal and hope and diligence in his work could not lighten the
persistent sadness which was Alick's chief characteristic now. Gaunt
and silent, with the eyes of a man whose inner self is absent and
whose thoughts are not with his company, he looked as if he had passed
through the fire, and had not passed through unscathed. No one knew
what had happened to him, and, though many made conjectures, none came
near the truth. Meanwhile, he seemed as if he lived only to work, and,
the clearer-sighted might have added, to wait.

For a further local change, Lionnet was tenanted again by a strange
and solitary man, who never went to church and did not visit in
the neighborhood. He was in consequence believed to be a forger, an
escaped convict in hiding, or, by the more charitable, a maniac as yet
not dangerous. North Aston held him in deeper horror than it had held
even Pepita, and his true personality exercised its wits more keenly
than had even the true personality of madame. In point of fact, he was
a quiet, inoffensive, amiable man, who gave his mind to Sanskrit for
work and to entomology for play, and did not trouble himself about his
own portrait as drawn in the local vernacular. Nevertheless, for all
his reserved habits and quiet ways, he had learnt the whole history of
the place and people before he had been at Lionnet a month.

At the Hill things remained unchanged for the ladies, save for the
additional burden of years and the pleasant news that Edgar was
expected home daily. Adelaide, now twenty-four, took the news as a
personal grace, and blossomed into smiles and glad humor of which only
Josephine understood the source. But Josephine held her tongue, and
received the confidence of her young friend with discretion. As she
had never dispossessed her own old idol, she could feel for Adelaide,
and she was not disposed to look on her patient determination with
displeasure. The constancy of the two, however, was very different in
essential meaning. With Josephine it was the constancy that is born of
an affectionate disposition and the absence of rival Lotharios: with
Adelaide it was the result of calculation and decision. The one would
have worshiped Sebastian as she worshiped him now had he been ruined,
a cripple, a criminal even: the other would have shut out Edgar
inexorably from her very dreams had not his personality included
the Hill. With the one it was self-abasement--with the other
self-consideration;