Although not a word escaped Miss Halcombe which hinted at an altered state of feeling towards myself, her penetrating eyes had contracted a new habit of always watching me. Sometimes the look was like suppressed anger, sometimes like suppressed dread, sometimes like neither -- like nothing, in short, which I could understand. A week elapsed, leaving us all three still in this position of secret constraint towards one another. My situation, aggravated by the sense of my own miserable weakness and forgetfulness of myself, now too late awakened in me, was becoming intolerable. I felt that I must cast off the oppression under which I was living, at once and for ever -- yet how to act for the- best, or what to say first, was more than I could tell. from this position of helplessness and humiliation I was rescued by Miss Halcombe. Her lips told me the bitter, the necessary, the unexpected truth; her hearty kindness sustained me under the shock of hearing it; her sense and courage turned to its right use an event which threatened the worst that could happen, to me and to others, in Limmeridge House. IX It was on a Thursday in the week, and nearly at the end of the third month of my sojourn in Cumberland.
In the morning, when I went down into the breakfast-room at the usual hour, Miss Halcombe, for the first time since I had known her, was absent from her customary place at the table.
Miss Fairlie was out on the lawn. She bowed to me, but did not come in. Not a word had dropped from my lips, or from hers, that could unsettle either of us -- and yet the same unacknowledged sense of embarrassment made us shrink alike from meeting one another alone. She waited on the lawn, and I waited in the breakfast-room, till Mrs Vesey or Miss Halcombe came in. How quickly I should have joined her: how readily we should have shaken hands, and glided into our customary talk, only a fortnight ago.
In a few minutes Miss Halcombe entered. She had a preoccupied look, and she made her apologies for being late rather absently.
‘I have been detained,' she said. ‘by a consultation with Mr Fairlie on a domestic matter which he wished to speak to me about.'
Miss Fairlie came in from the garden, and the usual morning greeting passed between us. Her hand struck colder to mine than ever. She did not look at me, and she was very pale. Even Mrs Vesey noticed when she entered the room a moment after.
‘I suppose it is the change in the wind,' said the old lady. ‘The winter is coming -- ah, my love, the winter is coming soon!'
In her heart and in mine it had come already!
Our morning meal -- once so full of pleasant good-humoured discussion of the plans for the day -- was short and silent. Miss Fairlie seemed to feel the oppression of the long pauses in the conversation, and looked appealingly to her sister to fill them up. Miss Halcombe, after once or twice hesitating and checking herself, in a most uncharacteristic manner, spoke at last.
‘I have seen your uncle this morning, Laura,' she said. ‘He thinks the purple room is the one that ought to be got ready, and he confirms what I told you. Monday is the day -- not Tuesday.'
While these words were being spoken Miss Fairlie looked down at the table beneath her. Her fingers moved nervously among the crumbs that were scattered on the cloth. The paleness on her cheeks spread to her lips, and the lips themselves trembled visibly. I was not the only person present who noticed this. Miss Halcombe saw it, too, and at once set us the example of rising from table.
Mrs Vesey and Miss Fairlie left the room together. The kind sorrowful blue eyes looked at me, for a moment, with the prescient sadness of a coming and a long farewell. I felt the answering pang in my own heart -- the pang that told me I must lose her soon, and love her the more unchangeably for the loss.
I turned towards the garden when the door had closed on her. Miss Halcombe was standing with her hat in her hand, and her shawl over her arm, by the large window that led out to the lawn, and was looking at me attentively.
‘Have you any leisure time to spare,' she asked, ‘before you begin to work in your own room?'
‘Certainly, Miss Halcombe. I have always time at your service.'
‘I want to say a word to you in private, Mr Hartright. Get your hat and come out into the garden. We are not likely to be disturbed there at this hour in the morning.'
As we stepped out on to the lawn, one of the under-gardeners -- a mere lad -- passed us on his way to the house, with a letter in his hand. Miss Halcombe stopped him.
‘Is that letter for me?' she asked.
‘Nay, miss; it's just said to be for Miss Fairlie,' answered the lad, holding out the letter as he spoke.
Miss Halcombe took it from him and looked at the address.
‘A strange handwriting,' she said to herself. ‘Who can Laura's correspondent be? Where did you get this?' she continued, addressing the gardener, ‘Well, miss,' said the lad, ‘l just got it from a woman.'
‘What woman?'
‘A woman well stricken in age.'
‘Oh, an old woman. Any one you knew?'
‘I canna tak' it on mysel' to say that she was other than a stranger to me.'
‘Which way did she go?'
‘That gate,' said the under-gardener, turning with great deliberation towards the south, and embracing the whole of that part of England with one comprehensive sweep of his arm.
‘Curious,' said Miss Halcombe; ‘I suppose it must be a begging-letter.
There,' she added, handing the letter back to the lad, ‘take it to the house, and give it to one of the servants. And now, Mr Hartright, if you have no objection, let us walk this way.'
She led me across the lawn, along the same path by which I had followed her on the day after my arrival at Limmeridge. At the little summer-house, in which Laura Fairlie and I had first seen each other, she stopped, and broke the silence which she had steadily maintained while we were walking together.
‘What I have to say to you I can say here.'