It
made Eve tremble.
But now the Fountains were aiding her to cure this folly. She had read
them right, had described them to David aright. A wind of caprice had
carried him and her into Font Abbey; another such wind was carrying
them out. No event had happened. Mr. and Miss Fountain had been seen
more than once in the village of late. "They have dropped us, and
thank Heaven!" said Eve, in her idiomatic way.
She pitied David deeply, and was kinder and kinder to him now, to show
him she felt for him; but she never mentioned the Font Abbey people to
him either to praise or blame them, though it was all she could do to
suppress her satisfaction at the turn their insolent caprice had
taken.
That satisfaction was soon clouded. This time, instead of rousing
himself and his pride, David sank into a moody despondency; varied by
occasional fretfulness. His appetite went, and his bright color, and
his elastic step. This silent sadness was so new in him, such a
contrast to his natural temperature, large, genial, and ever cheerful,
that Eve could not bear it. "I must shake him out of this, at all
hazards," thought she: yet she put off the experiment, and put it off,
partly in hopes that David would speak first, partly because she saw
the wound she would probe was deep, and she winced beforehand for her
patient.
Meantime, prolonged doubt and suspense now goaded with their
intolerable stings the active spirit that chill misgivings had at
first benumbed.
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