'You said you would, and you must,' insisted Elfride, coming to
the door and speaking under her father's arm.
Whatever reason the youth may have had for not wishing to enter
the house as a guest, it no longer predominated. He promised, and
bade them adieu, and got into the pony-carriage, which crept up
the slope, and bore him out of their sight.
'I never was so much taken with anybody in my life as I am with
that young fellow--never! I cannot understand it--can't understand
it anyhow,' said Mr. Swancourt quite energetically to himself; and
went indoors.
Chapter VII
'No more of me you knew, my love!'
Stephen Smith revisited Endelstow Vicarage, agreeably to his
promise. He had a genuine artistic reason for coming, though no
such reason seemed to be required. Six-and-thirty old seat ends,
of exquisite fifteenth-century workmanship, were rapidly decaying
in an aisle of the church; and it became politic to make drawings
of their worm-eaten contours ere they were battered past
recognition in the turmoil of the so-called restoration.
He entered the house at sunset, and the world was pleasant again
to the two fair-haired ones. A momentary pang of disappointment
had, nevertheless, passed through Elfride when she casually
discovered that he had not come that minute post-haste from
London, but had reached the neighbourhood the previous evening.
Surprise would have accompanied the feeling, had she not
remembered that several tourists were haunting the coast at this
season, and that Stephen might have chosen to do likewise.
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