Hester kept trying
to meet him as simply and directly as she could, although to meet these
supposed difficulties she was unconsciously compelled to transform them,
in order to get a hold of them at all, into something the nearest like
them that she understood--still something very different from anything
in Vavasor's thoughts. But what she said made no difference to him, so
long as she would talk to him. And talk she did, sometimes with an
affectionate fervor of whose very possibility he had had no idea. So
long as she would talk, he cared not a straw whether she understood what
he had said; and with all her misconception, she understood it better
than he did himself. Thus her growing desire to wake in him the better
life, brought herself into relations with him which had an earthly side,
as everything heavenly of necessity has; for this life also is God's,
and the hairs of our heads are numbered.
CHAPTER XXVII.
MAJOR H.G. MARVEL.
One afternoon when Vavasor was in his room, writing a letter to his
aunt, in which he described in not too glowing terms, for he knew
exaggeration would only give her a handle, the loveliness of the retreat
among the hills where he was spending his holiday--when her father was
in his study, her mother in her own room, and the children out of doors,
a gentleman was shown in upon her as she sat alone in the drawing-room
at her piano, not playing but looking over some books of old music she
had found in the house.
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