Book 6 - Chapter 7

Philip Re-enters

The next morning was very wet,--the sort of morning on which male
neighbors 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 become so
heavy, and at the same time so certain to clear up by and by, that
nothing but an open quarrel can abbreviate the visit; latent
detestation will not do at all. And if people happen to be lovers,
what can be so delightful, in England, as a rainy morning? English
sunshine is dubious; bonnets 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 mackintosh, and presently find
yourself in the seat you like best,--a little above or a little below
the one on which your goddess sits (it is the same thing to the
metaphysical mind, and that is the reason why women are at once
worshipped and looked down upon), with a satisfactory confidence that
there will be no lady-callers.

"Stephen will come earlier this morning, I know," said Lucy; "he
always does when it's 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 gone to her aunt Glegg's this morning, 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 come earlier, and there was another visitor--a
nearer neighbor--who preceded him. When Philip entered the 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 advanced
toward him and put out her hand, he guessed at once that Lucy had been
taken into her confidence. It 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-control, 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 to strangers would seem
expressive of cold indifference, were all the signs Philip usually
gave of an inward drama that was not without its fierceness. But
Maggie, who had little more power of concealing the impressions made
upon her than if she had been constructed of musical strings, felt her
eyes getting larger with tears as they took each other's hands in
silence. They were not painful tears; they had rather something of the
same origin as the tears women and children shed