On the very last evening of her stay in Dorsetshire, Walter came
round to see her. Mrs. Compson and the girls managed to keep
discreetly out of the young people's way; the rector was in his
study preparing his Sunday sermon, which arduous intellectual
effort was supposed to engage his close attention for five hours or
so weekly. Not a mouse interrupted. So Dolly and her lover had
the field to themselves from eight to ten in the rectory drawing-room.
From the first moment of Walter's entry, Dolly was dimly aware,
womanlike, of something amiss, something altered in his manner.
Not, indeed, that her lover was less affectionate or less tender
than usual,--if anything he seemed rather more so; but his talk was
embarrassed, pre-occupied, spasmodic. He spoke by fits and starts,
and seemed to hold back something. Dolly taxed him with it at
last. Walter tried to put it off upon her approaching departure.
But he was an honest young man, and so bad an actor that Dolly,
with her keen feminine intuitions, at once detected him. "It's
more than that," she said, all regret, leaning forward with a
quick-gathering moisture in her eye, for she really loved him.
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