There was not a word of love used between the pair. All
the love-making, indeed, was done by Senhouse, whose master-stroke was
called for by and by.
Towards the end of April she was alone in Charles Street, preparing the
house for Lady Maria's return from Rome. Ingram was still at Wanless,
grumbling through his duties of magistrate, landlord, and county
gentleman. "They seem to think up here that a fellow has nothing to do but
'take the chair,'" he wrote. "I can tell you I'm pretty sick of it, and
fancy that they will be before long. I'm an awkward customer when I'm
bored--as I am now, damnably." She sent him matter-of-fact replies, and
wrote principally of the weather.
The Pole continued his discreet and temperate wooing after the plan he had
formulated. He strove to interest her perpetually, never left her without
having, as he taught himself to believe, impressed himself anew upon her
imagination. Watching her as a cat a mouse, he learned to read her by
signs so slight that no one who had not the intuition of a woman could
have seen them at all. Unfortunately for him, he misinterpreted what he
read. The slap-dash Ingram thought all was well; Chevenix, the more
observant, thought there was a bare chance; Morosine alone could see how
her quivering soul was being bruised, and if he thought that she looked to
him for balm, he may be excused.
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