It was what Thomasin had written in the very first letter. Lady Anne's eyes flickered—something, a stillness, gone at once—and she smiled and said, "You're kind to say so," and turned to Thomasin with her hand out. "And you are Miss Bramley."
"Yes, my lady."
"You'll want the fire." Lady Anne looked at her a moment longer than was usual. Her eyes were grey and very clear and Thomasin felt, absurdly, as if she had been read. "Come in. Come in, all of you. The bell's flat, I'm afraid; you'll have to get used to it. My brother says it's the only honest thing in the house."
Thomasin had read those words in July, in the fine sloping hand, on the stairs at Laura Place. She went in behind the others with her eyes on the flagstones and did not look up until she was at the fire.
At dinner that night Lord Carrowby sat at the head of his table with his intended at his right hand and tried, Thomasin could see, very hard. He asked about the journey. He asked about Mr. Ackroyd's foot, and listened to the answer for twenty minutes. He turned at last to Dorothea and said, rather low, "You found the heron, I think. I saw the carriage stop."
"He's very like his portrait," said Dorothea. "He stands so still the water forgets him."
The Earl looked at her. Something moved across his face and was mastered.
"Yes," he said. "That's what I—that is exactly it."
Lady Anne, at the foot of the table, put down her glass very carefully, and did not look at anyone at all.
VIII.
For four days it went on like that, and for four days Thomasin did not write a word.
It was harder than she had imagined. At Carrowby, everyone wrote. Lady Anne wrote at the table under the library window every morning from nine until eleven, letters and accounts and lists for the housekeeper, Mrs. Thewlis, in the fine sloping hand. Mr. Ackroyd wrote to his clerks at Leeds in a great sprawling commercial fist and left the letters about on every table in the house. Twice a day somebody held out a pen to Thomasin—would Miss Bramley be so good as to note the laundry, would Miss Bramley add a line to Mr. Ackroyd's letter for his housekeeper—and twice a day she said she had a headache, or had cut her finger, or would do it presently, and did not. Dorothea watched her refuse, and said nothing.