So Oliver shrugged re-signedly, and held his peace.
There he left the affair, nor ever spoke again of Malpas and the siren
who presided there. And meanwhile the autumn faded into winter, and
with the coming of stormy weather Sir Oliver and Rosamund had fewer
opportunities of meeting. To Godolphin Court he would not go since she
did not desire it; and himself he deemed it best to remain away since
otherwise he must risk a quarrel with its master, who had forbidden him
the place. In those days he saw Peter Godolphin but little, and on the
rare occasions when they did meet they passed each other with a very
meagre salute.
Sir Oliver was entirely happy, and men noticed how gentler were his
accents, how sunnier had become a countenance that they had known for
haughty and forbidding. He waited for his coming happiness with the
confidence of an immortal in the future. Patience was all the service
Fate asked of him, and he gave that service blithely, depending upon the
reward that soon now would be his own. Indeed, the year drew near its
close; and ere another winter should come round Penarrow House would own
a mistress. That to him seemed as inevitable as the season itself. And
yet for all his supreme confidence, for all his patience and the
happiness he culled from it, there were moments when he seemed oppressed
by some elusive sense of overhanging doom, by some subconsciousness of
an evil in the womb of Destiny.
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