quite a distance his illuminated parlour window; but the white blind was drawn down; she was just going to be bitterly disappointed, when a shadow, his shadow, passed across it. She glowed with pleasure, with gratitude, for her great good luck, and answered young Mallienne, who sat beside her, with strange irrelevancy.
For in spite of everything she could not realise to herself that Owen did not love her; her heart refused to envisage it. Although he made no effort to see her, although he gave no sign, she still believed that all would yet be well. She leaned on Fate; something would be sure to happen . . . some day, when she was her own mistress. . . . She thought of him constantly, loved him as tenderly as before.
The summer was extraordinarily fine. The heat which had begun in March, lasted right through to September; in the middle of the day from July onwards, it was almost unbearable. One Saturday, when Agnes had been into town as usual, and the omnibus filling up almost the moment it reached the Market Place, had been obliged to walk back, she found, on her return, Frederic in one of those states of nervous excitement from which he periodically suffered. Mrs. Le Messurier had given him a soothing draught, the last in the house. It was essential to have more in case it were required in the night or the next day.
Agnes, pleased at the chance of a second journey into town, since it gave her a second chance of meeting Owen, volunteered to go and get it. Mrs. Le Messurier told her she looked done up with the heat already, but that she might go when she had had her dinner, and must take the omnibus both ways.
It was half-past two when she reached town, crossed over to Mauger's, and waited while the prescription was made up, andthen
