wait? I will come presently!" and my uncle looked up as if I had spoken.
Perhaps he had as good as heard the words; he possessed what almost
seemed a supernatural faculty of divining the thought of another--not, I
was sure, by any effort to perceive it, but by involuntary intuition. He
uttered no inquiring word, but a light sigh escaped him, which all but
made me burst into tears. I was on one side of a widening gulf, and he on
the other!

Our lessons ended, he rose immediately and left the room. Five minutes
passed, and then came the clatter of his horse's feet on the stones of
the yard. A moment more, and I heard him ride away at a quick trot. I
burst into tears where I still sat beside my uncle's empty chair. I was
weary like one in a dream searching in vain for a spot whereupon to set
down her heart-breaking burden. There was no one but my uncle to whom I
could tell any trouble, and the trouble I could not have told him had
hitherto been unimaginable! From this my reader may judge what a trouble
it was that I could not tell him my trouble. I was a traitor to my only
friend! Had I begun to love him less? had I begun to turn away from him?
I dared not believe it. That would have been to give eternity to my
misery. But it might be that at heart I was a bad, treacherous girl! I
had again a secret from him! I was not _with_ him!

I went into the garden. The day was sultry and oppressive. Coolness or
comfort was nowhere. I sought the shadow of the live yew-walls; there was
shelter in the shadow, but it oppressed the lungs while it comforted the
eyes. Not a breath of wind breathed; the atmosphere seemed to have lost
its life-giving. I went out into the wilderness. There the air was filled
and heaped with the odours of the heavenly plants that crowded its humble
floor, but they gave me no welcome. Between two bushes that flamed out
roses, I lay down, and the heather and the rose-trees closed above me. My