The cross country rides were resumed, the Major always in attendance; and Leonard and his cousin were seen so often together, riding, driving, or walking, that the idea of an engagement between them became a fixture in the local mind, which held that when one was off with the old love it was well to be on with the new.
And so the summer ripened and waned. Mrs. Tregonell's health seemed to improve in the calm happiness of a domestic life in which there was no indication of disunion. She had never surrendered her hope of Christabel's relenting. Leonard's frank and generous character--his good looks--his local popularity--must ultimately prevail over the memory of another--that other having so completely given up his chances. Mrs. Tregonell was half inclined to recognize the nobleness of that renunciation; half disposed to accept it as a proof that Angus Hamleigh's heart still hankered after the actress who had been his first infatuation. In either case no one could doubt that it was well for Christabel to be released from such an engagement. To wed Angus would have been to tie herself to sickness and death--to take upon herself the burden of early widowhood, to put on sackcloth and ashes as a wedding garment.
It was winter, and there were patches of snow upon the hills, and sea and sky were of one chill slaty hue, before Leonard ventured to repeat that question which he had asked with such ill effect in the sweet summer morning, between hedgerows flushed with roses. But through all the changes of the waning year there had been one purpose in his mind, and every act of his life had tended to one result. He had sworn to himself that his cousin should be his wife. Whatever barriers of disinclination, direct antagonism even, there might be on her side must be broken down by dogged patience, unyielding determination on his side. He had the spirit of the hunter, to whom that prey is most precious which costs the longest chase. He loved his cousin more passionately to-day, after keeping his feelings in check for six months, than he had loved her when he asked her to be his wife. Every day of delay had increased his ardour and strengthened his resolve.
It was New Year's day. Christabel and Miss Bridgeman had been to church in the morning, and had taken a long walk with Leonard, who contrived to waylay them at the church door after church. Then had come a rather late luncheon, after which Christabel spent an hour in her aunt's room reading to her, and talking a little in a subdued way. It was one of Mrs. Tregonell's bad days, a day upon which she could hardly leave her sofa, and Christabel came away from the invalid's room full of sadness.