He stood a long while by the Iona cross over the violets, while the dusk deepened to a gloom like that of his mind. How empty seemed London now! And all life, how scantless and stale now, without the purple and perfume of her! For she was gone, and "all necessity for any communication between her and him was now at an end." He went away from the cemetery whistling a tune, with a jaunty step, in order to persuade himself that his heart was not hollow, nor his mind black with care.
For some time after this disappearance of Violet, David needed the focusing of all his manhood to set himself to work. His feeling was that nothing is worth while. He wished to sit in his easy-chair, stare, and be vaguely conscious of the coming and going of his charwoman. An old Londoner now, he no longer heard the roar, nor stifled at the smoke of that torrent that goes up forever. He could have sat over his fire in a sort of abstract state, without thought, hope, or care, for days. If he took up the pen he groaned; but he did take it up, and it proved medicinal. Little by little he acquired tone.
Meantime, he would often re-read the note which had had so powerful an effect on him, until one day, in the ripening of his mind, the thought rose in him: "There's something queer here. She must have been very agitated when she wrote this!"
Then he began to think that it was not quite like Violet's writing. Presently hope, energy, action burst into blossom afresh within him. Suppose, he thought, that the whole business was somehow a trick of that man? Suppose that she was in London all the time? He wrote to her at Porchester Gardens that day, but received no answer. Van Hupfeldt had given orders that all letters for the Mordaunts should be sent to him, nor did he send on David's letter to Violet, for he knew David's writing. Moreover, he had warned the proprietors at Porchester Gardens that a certain man, who was likely to make himself troublesome to the Mordaunts, might present himself there in the hope of learning their address in the country, in view of which they had better give the address to no one.
Now, at David's only meeting with Violet at the grave, she had mentioned to him her country address, but, having heard it only once and that heedlessly, when his brain was full of new notions, it had so far passed out of his mind in the course of time that all that he could remember of it was that it was in Warwickshire. Nor could any racking of his brains bring back more of it than the name of the county. After some days he betook himself to Porchester Gardens.