‘The fact is, Mrs Crawshay, there is no great danger in the case itself, although two ribs are broken. The real danger lies in his impatience to be away and home again. I think your niece has something to do with that. He let it out to me to-day when he told me that he was not so impatient to go as he was impatient to be back. You must persuade Miss Heathcote to use her influence to keep him quiet.’
Madge went to the village post-office herself. Even the posting of this letter had obtained what at the moment appeared to be a somewhat undue importance. However, it was safely placed in the box by her own hand, and she experienced a sense of relief as if she had got rid of a burden. There were so many things she might have said, and had not, so many phrases she might have altered or modified to suit the peculiar associations which it revived, that so long as it remained in her possession there seemed a probability of being constrained to go back and write it all over again. If on the contents of this letter had depended the most fateful turning-point in her life, and she had been aware of it, she could not have been more exercised in mind about them, or more relieved when the die was cast into the post-box.
Now she turned with lightened steps towards Ringsford. In the fields on every side the ploughs and harrows were at work; occasionally there was the crack of a gun, and in the distance she could see the blue smoke wreathing up into the air and the sportsmen following their dogs. A soft russet tinge like a great brown cobweb lay upon the Forest, and leaves were fluttering hesitatingly to the ground, as if uncertain whether or not it was yet time to quit the branches. These were the tokens that the harvest-time was over, and the fat ricks in the farmyards told that there had been a goodly ingathering.
When she reached the Manor, the young ladies had barely finished breakfast. They had been dancing until daylight shamed the lamps in the marquee, and consequently they were still at their first meal long after the forenoon dinner had been finished at Willowmere.
‘Why did you not tell us about poor Philip last night, Madge?’ was Miss Hadleigh’s salutation, adding, with a shrug of the shoulders which might represent a shudder: ‘It is so dreadful to think of us all enjoying ourselves while our brother was lying at death’s door.’