'Have you nothing to say?' she continued. 'Your footsteps were audible to me from the very bottom, and I knew they were yours. You look almost restored.'

'I am almost restored,' he replied, respectfully pressing her hand. 'A reason for living arose, and I lived.'

'What reason?' she inquired, with a rapid blush.

He pointed to the rocket-like object in the western sky.

'Oh, you mean the comet. Well, you will never make a courtier! You know, of course, what has happened to me; that I have no longer a husband--have had none for a year and a half. Have you also heard that I am now quite a poor woman? Tell me what you think of it.'

'I have thought very little of it since I heard that you seemed to mind poverty but little. There is even this good in it, that I may now be able to show you some little kindness for all those you have done me, my dear lady.'

'Unless for economy's sake, I go and live abroad, at Dinan, Versailles, or Boulogne.'

Swithin, who had never thought of such a contingency, was earnest in his regrets; without, however, showing more than a sincere friend's disappointment.

'I did not say it was absolutely necessary,' she continued. 'I have, in fact, grown so homely and home-loving, I am so interested in the place and the people here, that, in spite of advice, I have almost determined not to let the house; but to continue the less business-like but pleasanter alternative of living humbly in a part of it, and shutting up the rest.'

'Your love of astronomy is getting as strong as mine!' he said ardently.

'You could not tear yourself away from the observatory!'

'You might have supposed me capable of a little human feeling as well as scientific, in connection with the observatory.'

'Dear Lady Constantine, by admitting that your astronomer has also a part of your interest--'

'Ah, you did not find it out without my telling!' she said, with a playfulness which was scarcely playful, a new accession of pinkness being visible in her face. 'I diminish myself in your esteem by reminding you.'

'You might do anything in this world without diminishing yourself in my esteem, after the goodness you have shown. And more than that, no misrepresentation, no rumour, no d.a.m.ning appearance whatever would ever shake my loyalty to you.'

'But you put a very matter-of-fact construction on my motives sometimes.

You see me in such a hard light that I have to drop hints in quite a manoeuvring manner to let you know I am as sympathetic as other people. I sometimes think you would rather have me die than have your equatorial stolen. Confess that your admiration for me was based on my house and position in the county! Now I am shorn of all that glory, such as it was, and am a widow, and am poorer than my tenants, and can no longer buy telescopes, and am unable, from the narrowness of my circ.u.mstances, to mix in circles that people formerly said I adorned, I fear I have lost the little hold I once had over you.'

'You are as unjust now as you have been generous. .h.i.therto,' said St.

Cleeve, with tears in his eyes at the gentle banter of the lady, which he, poor innocent, read as her real opinions. Seizing her hand he continued, in tones between reproach and anger, 'I swear to you that I have but two devotions, two thoughts, two hopes, and two blessings in this world, and that one of them is yourself!'

'And the other?'

'The pursuit of astronomy.'

'And astronomy stands first.'

'I have never ordinated two such dissimilar ideas. And why should you deplore your altered circ.u.mstances, my dear lady? Your widowhood, if I may take the liberty to speak on such a subject, is, though I suppose a sadness, not perhaps an unmixed evil. For though your pecuniary troubles have been discovered to the world and yourself by it, your happiness in marriage was, as you have confided to me, not great; and you are now left free as a bird to follow your own hobbies.'

'I wonder you recognize that.'

'But perhaps,' he added, with a sigh of regret, 'you will again fall a prey to some man, some uninteresting country squire or other, and be lost to the scientific world after all.'

'If I fall a prey to any man, it will not be to a country squire. But don't go on with this, for heaven's sake! You may think what you like in silence.'

'We are forgetting the comet,' said St. Cleeve. He turned, and set the instrument in order for observation, and wheeled round the dome.

While she was looking at the nucleus of the fiery plume, that now filled so large a s.p.a.ce of the sky as completely to dominate it, Swithin dropped his gaze upon the field, and beheld in the dying light a number of labourers crossing directly towards the column.

'What do you see?' Lady Constantine asked, without ceasing to observe the comet.

'Some of the work-folk are coming this way. I know what they are coming for,--I promised to let them look at the comet through the gla.s.s.'

'They must not come up here,' she said decisively.

'They shall await your time.'

'I have a special reason for wishing them not to see me here. If you ask why, I can tell you. They mistakenly suspect my interest to be less in astronomy than in the astronomer, and they must have no showing for such a wild notion. What can you do to keep them out?'

'I'll lock the door,' said Swithin. 'They will then think I am away.' He ran down the staircase, and she could hear him hastily turning the key.

Lady Constantine sighed.

'What weakness, what weakness!' she said to herself. 'That envied power of self-control, where is it? That power of concealment which a woman should have--where? To run such risks, to come here alone,--oh, if it were known! But I was always so,--always!'

She jumped up, and followed him downstairs.

XIII

He was standing immediately inside the door at the bottom, though it was so dark she could hardly see him. The villagers were audibly talking just without.

'He's sure to come, rathe or late,' resounded up the spiral in the vocal note of Hezzy Biles. 'He wouldn't let such a fine show as the comet makes to-night go by without peeping at it,--not Master Cleeve! Did ye bring along the flagon, Haymoss? Then we'll sit down inside his little board-house here, and wait. He'll come afore bed-time. Why, his spy- gla.s.s will stretch out that there comet as long as Welland Lane!'

'I'd as soon miss the great peep-show that comes every year to Greenhill Fair as a sight of such a immortal spectacle as this!' said Amos Fry.

'"Immortal spectacle,"--where did ye get that choice mossel, Haymoss?'

inquired Sammy Blore. 'Well, well, the Lord save good scholars--and take just a bit o' care of them that bain't! As 'tis so dark in the hut, suppose we draw out the bench into the front here, souls?'

The bench was accordingly brought forth, and in order to have a back to lean against, they placed it exactly across the door into the spiral staircase.

'Now, have ye got any backy? If ye haven't, I have,' continued Sammy Blore. A striking of matches followed, and the speaker concluded comfortably, 'Now we shall do very well.'

'And what do this comet mean?' asked Haymoss. 'That some great tumult is going to happen, or that we shall die of a famine?'

'Famine--no!' said Nat Chapman. 'That only touches such as we, and the Lord only consarns himself with born gentlemen. It isn't to be supposed that a strange fiery lantern like that would be lighted up for folks with ten or a dozen shillings a week and their gristing, and a load o' thorn f.a.ggots when we can get 'em. If 'tis a token that he's getting hot about the ways of anybody in this parish, 'tis about my Lady Constantine's, since she is the only one of a figure worth such a hint.'

'As for her income,--that she's now lost.'

'Ah, well; I don't take in all I hear.'

Lady Constantine drew close to St. Cleeve's side, and whispered, trembling, 'Do you think they will wait long? Or can we get out?'

Swithin felt the awkwardness of the situation. The men had placed the bench close to the door, which, owing to the stairs within, opened outwards; so that at the first push by the pair inside to release themselves the bench must have gone over, and sent the smokers sprawling on their faces. He whispered to her to ascend the column and wait till he came.