Things went on in this way for a week or two after Mrs. Rolt’s visit; nothing further occurred to disturb the sisters in their stillness, and Nancy at least required the stimulation of some new thing. She got into despair about her reading, her conscientious pursuit of knowledge and accomplishments. If things were always to go on as now, what was the good? Every day she got up hoping that something might happen, some encounter that would quicken the blood in her veins; but nothing happened. It was rainy weather, and not even a hairbreadth escape of meeting Lucy, or any chance of being recognized--that danger which she professed to fear and secretly longed for--had ever happened. The village life was very dull and still, and the sisters had no natural distractions, no breaks upon the heaviness and monotony of the rainy autumn days. To Matilda, indeed, it was occupation enough to get on steadily with her chemises, and she even rejoiced in the quiet which permitted her to “get so much done.” But Nancy, even without the sense of uncertainty in her fate which made her restless, was not sufficiently placid of nature to have lived without break or change; and her whole scheme of living, artificial as it had been from the beginning, was disorganized and broken up. She had hoped everything at first, making a little romance of the story: how Arthur would come to seek her as soon as he knew of “what had happened;” how, failing to find her at Underhayes, he would rush everywhere to look for her, advertise for her, pursue her far and near; how he would come sadly home to tell his mother that his Nancy was lost for ever and his heart broken; and then would find her, turning all trouble into joy. This was the fancy the foolish girl had cherished in her heart; but there was no sign or appearance that anything would come of it. On the contrary, she began to perceive something like the real state of affairs; she saw what she had brought upon her husband by her causeless abandonment of him, and something of the light in which her conduct must appear to others; and how could she be sure that he was now ready to pardon, ready to open his arms to her again? This thought disturbed all Nancy’s confidence in her progress, in her reading, her French, her beautifully shaded _étude_. What folly these labours would all turn to if he despised them, and had no interest in her improvement! It could do her no good to be a lady unless she was reconciled to Arthur; and what if to be reconciled was no longer Arthur’s desire?