idea of a competition between Somerset and Havill had been highly approved by Paula’s solicitor, but she would not assent to it as yet, seeming quite vexed that Somerset should not have taken the good the gods provided without questioning her justice to Havill. The room she had offered him was prepared as a studio. Drawing-boards and Whatman’s paper were sent for, and in a few days Somerset began serious labour. His first requirement was a clerk or two, to do the drudgery of measuring and figuring; but for the present he preferred to sketch alone. Sometimes, in measuring the outworks of the castle, he ran against Havill strolling about with no apparent object, who bestowed on him an envious nod, and passed by.
‘I hope you will not make your sketches,’ she said, looking in upon him one day, ‘and then go away to your studio in London and think of your other buildings and forget mine. I am in haste to begin, and wish you not to neglect me.’
‘I have no other building to think of,’ said Somerset, rising and placing a chair for her. ‘I had not begun practice, as you may know. I have nothing else in hand but your castle.’
‘I suppose I ought not to say I am glad of it; but it is an advantage to have an architect all to one’s self. The architect whom I at first thought of told me before I knew you that if I placed the castle in his hands he would undertake no other commission till its completion.’
‘I agree to the same,’ said Somerset.
‘I don’t wish to bind you. But I hinder you now – do pray go on without reference to me. When will there be some drawing for me to see?’
‘I will take care that it shall be soon.’
He had a metallic tape in his hand, and went out of the room to take some dimension in the corridor. The assistant for whom he had advertised had not arrived, and he attempted to fix the end of the tape by sticking his penknife through the ring into the wall. Paula looked on at a distance.
‘I will hold it,’ she said.
She went to the required corner and held the end in its place. She had taken it the wrong way, and Somerset went over and placed it properly in her fingers, carefully avoiding to touch them. She obediently raised her hand to the corner again, and stood till he had finished, when she asked, ‘Is that all?’
‘That is all,’ said Somerset. ‘Thank you.’ Without further speech she looked at his sketch-book, while he marked down the lines just acquired.
‘You said the other day,’ she observed, ‘that early Gothic work might be known by the under-cutting, or something to that effect. I have looked in Rickman and the Oxford Glossary, but I cannot quite understand what you meant.’
It was only too probable to her lover, from the way in which she turned to him, that she HAD looked in Rickman and the Glossary, and was thinking of nothing in the world but of the subject of her inquiry.
‘I can show you, by actual example, if you will come to the chapel?’ he returned hesitatingly.
‘Don’t go on purpose to show me – when you are there on your own account I will come in.’
‘I shall be there in half-an-hour.’
‘Very well,’ said Paula. She looked out of a window, and, seeing Miss De Stancy on the terrace, left him.
Somerset stood thinking of what he had said. He had no occasion whatever to go into the chapel of the castle that day. He had been tempted by her words to say he would be there, and ‘half-an-hour’ had come to his lips almost without his knowledge. This community of interest – if it were not anything more tender – was growing serious. What had passed between them amounted to an appointment; they were going to meet in the most solitary chamber of the whole solitary pile. Could it be that Paula had well considered this in replying with her friendly ‘Very well?’ Probably not.
Somerset proceeded to the chapel and waited. With the progress of the seconds towards the half-hour he began to discover that a dangerous admiration for this girl had risen within him. Yet so imaginative was his passion that he hardly knew a single feature of her countenance well enough to remember it in her absence. The meditative judgment of things and men which had been his habit up to the moment of seeing her in the Baptist chapel seemed to have left him – nothing remained but a distracting wish to be always near her, and it was quite with dismay that he recognized what immense importance he was attaching to the question whether she would keep the trifling engagement or not.
The chapel of Stancy Castle was a silent place, heaped up in corners with a lumber of old panels, framework, and broken coloured glass. Here no clock could be heard beating out the hours of the day – here no voice of priest or deacon had for generations uttered the daily service denoting how the year rolls on. The stagnation of the spot was sufficient to draw Somerset’s mind for a moment from the subject which absorbed it, and he thought, ‘So, too, will time triumph over all this fervour within me.’
Lifting his eyes from the floor on which his foot had been tapping nervously, he saw Paula standing at the other end. It was not so pleasant when he also saw that Mrs. Goodman accompanied her. The latter lady, however, obligingly remained where she was resting, while Paula came forward, and, as usual, paused without speaking.
‘It is in this little arcade that the example occurs,’ said Somerset.
‘O yes,’ she answered, turning to look at it.
‘Early piers, capitals, and mouldings, generally alternated with deep hollows, so as to form strong shadows. Now look under the abacus of this capital; you will find the stone hollowed out wonderfully; and also in this arch-mould. It is often difficult to understand how it could be done without cracking off the stone. The difference between this and late work can be felt by the hand even better than it can be seen.’ He suited the action to the word and placed his hand in the hollow.
She listened attentively, then stretched up her own hand to test the cutting as he had done; she was not quite tall enough; she would step upon this piece of wood. Having done so she tried again, and succeeded in putting her finger on the spot. No; she could not understand it through her glove even now. She pulled off her glove, and, her hand resting in the stone channel, her eyes became abstracted in the effort of realization, the ideas derived through her hand passing into her face.
‘No, I am not sure now,’ she said.
Somerset placed his own hand in the cavity. Now their two hands were close together again. They had been close together half-an-hour earlier, and he had sedulously avoided touching hers. He dared not let such an accident happen now. And yet – surely she saw the situation! Was the inscrutable seriousness with which she applied herself to his lesson a mockery? There was such a bottomless depth in her eyes that it was impossible to guess truly. Let it be that destiny alone had ruled that their hands should be together a second time.
All rumination was cut short by an impulse. He seized her forefinger between his own finger and thumb, and drew it along the hollow, saying, ‘That is the curve I mean.’
Somerset’s hand was hot and trembling; Paula’s, on the contrary, was cool and soft as an infant’s.
‘Now the arch-mould,’ continued he. ‘There – the depth of that cavity is tremendous, and it is not geometrical, as in later work.’ He drew her unresisting fingers from the capital to the arch, and laid them in the little trench as before.
She allowed them to rest quietly there till he relinquished them. ‘Thank you,’ she then said, withdrawing her hand, brushing the dust from her finger-tips, and putting on her glove.
Her imperception
