Philip Re-Enters
THE m was very wet - the sort of m on which male neighbours who have no imperative occupation at home are likely to pay their fair friends an illimitable visit. The rain, which has been endurable enough for the walk or ride one way, is sure to bee so heavy and at the same time so certain to clear up by and by, that nothing but an open quarrel abbreviate the visit: lateation will not do at all. And if people happen to be lovers, what be so delightful - in England - as a rainy m? English sunshine is dubious: bos are never quite secure; and if you sit down on the grass, it may lead to catarrhs. But the rain is to be depended on. You gallop through it in a matosh and presently find yourself in the seat you like best - a little above or a little below the one on which yoddess sits - (it is the same thing to the metaphysid, and that is the reason why wome once worshipped and looked down upon) - with a satisfactory fidehat there will be no lady-callers. `Stephen will e earlier this m, I know, said Lucy. `He always does when its rainy.
Maggie made no answer. She was angry with Stephen; she began to think she should dislike him; and if it had not been for the rain, she would have goo her aunt Gleggs this m, and so have avoided him altogether. As it was, she must find some reason for remaining out of the room with her mother.
But Stephen did not e earlier, and there was another visitor - a nearer neighbour - who preceded him. When Philip ehe room, he was going merely to bow to Maggie, feeling that their acquaintance was a secret which he was bound not to betray; but when she advaowards him and put out her hand, he guessed at ohat Lucy had been taken into her fide was a moment of some agitation to both, though Philip had spent many hours in preparing for it; but like all persons who have passed through life with little expectation of sympathy, he seldom lost his self-trol, and shrank with the most sensitive pride from any noticeable betrayal of emotion. A little extra paleness, a little tension of the nostril when he spoke, and the voice pitched in rather a higher key, that ters would seem expressive of cold indifference, were all the signs Philip usually gave of an inward drama that was not without its fieress. But Maggie who had little more power of cealing the impressions made upohan if she had been structed of musical strings, felt her eyes getting larger with tears as they took each others hands in silehey were not painful tears: they had rather something of the same in as the tears women and children shed when they have found some prote to g to, and look ba the threatened danger. For Philip who a little while ago was associated tinually in Maggies mind with the sehat Tom might reproach her with some justice, had now, in this short space, bee a sort of outward sce to her, that she might fly to rescue and strength. Her tranquil, tender affe for Philip, with its root deep down in her childhood, and its memories of long quiet talk firming by distinct successive impressions the first instinctive bias - the fact that in him the appeal was more strongly to her pity and womanly devotedhan to her vanity or oistic excitability of her nature - seemed now to make a sort of sacred place, a sanctuary where she could find refuge from an alluring influence which the best part of herself must resist, which must bring horrible tumult within, wretess without. This new sense of her relation to Philip multiplied the anxi