Mrs. Egerton was seated in her room, which commanded the gate of the rectory, and in fact of the village street, waiting for Mr. Cattley to come back, and tell her how he had sped; and Mr. Cattley in John Sandford’s house was sitting with a sort of vague solace and consolation in the company of the gentle young woman who knew nothing about him, except that he was her brother’s friend, waiting for John. The afternoon was a little heavy, as afternoons in the summer often are. It had been raining all the morning, and the air was warm and damp, and the atmosphere oppressive. Elly, who had spent the day chiefly at home, taking her walk round and round the garden, lingering for a long time under the old pear-tree, had been seized at last by one of those fits of impatience which so often come upon us in a moment, nullifying the precautions of many days. She felt as if there was no air, and that a run across the common to the cottage of one of her pensioners would deliver her from the stifling of this oppressed and breathless state. She knew a way amongst the gorse, a wild little track over the moor and heather, which nobody but herself and the village children ever used. And she would not, she said to herself, be half-an-hour gone. She seized upon her little basket, which stood on the hall table, all nicely packed with certain little matters which made her a welcome visitor; and so went out, nobody seeing her, if anybody had thought of remarking. But, indeed, it was not for Elly, but Mr. Cattley that Mrs. Egerton was on the watch, and no one else took any notice of the goings and comings of the daughter of the house. She skimmed along as light as a bird, until she got among the gorse bushes, half ablaze with their yellow blossoms, filling the numerous bees with a sweet intoxication and the air with a honeyed balm; and there Elly lingered, her basket hanging from her hand, her head drooping, her mind full of thought, which was half troublous and half sweet. She felt the crisis, too, in every vein, but not as John felt it. The fears, the tribulations, the doubts of that moment were not for her. Her honour could never be called in question. No one could think of her as having betrayed any trust placed in her. Her brain was thrilling with a suppressed excitement and wonder as to the next step in this wonderful little drama of which she was the heroine. And she was aware that there would be blame: she was aware that there would be a struggle; but she was in no ways afraid of either one or the other. The commotion of the great new thing, the revolution which seemed to be imminent, the mingled reluctance and eagerness, the hesitation and the longing, made disturbance enough in her girlish breast.