Unorna herself believed in everything which strengthened and developed
that conviction, and especially in the influences of time and place. It
appeared to her a fortunate circumstance, when she at last determined
to overcome her pride, that the resolution should have formed itself
exactly a month after she had so successfully banished the memory of
Beatrice from the mind of the man she loved. She felt sure of producing
a result as effectual if, this time, she could work the second change
in the same place and under the same circumstances as the first. And to
this end everything was in her favour. She needed not to close her eyes
to fancy that thirty days had not really passed between then and now, as
she left her house in the afternoon with the Wanderer by her side.
He had come back and had found her once more herself, calm, collected,
conscious of her own powers. No suspicion of the real cause of the
disturbance he had witnessed crossed his mind, still less could he guess
what thing she meditated as she directed their walk towards that lonely
place by the river which had been the scene of her first great effort.
She talked lightly as they went, and he, in that strange humour of
peaceful, well-satisfied indifference which possessed him, answered her
in the same strain. It was yet barely afternoon, but there was already a
foretaste of coming evening in the chilly air.
"I have been thinking of what you said this morning," she said, suddenly
changing the current of the conversation.
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