But many days had not sped when an event occurred that precipitated the five acres into the jaws of the builders. Meason had sailed for Melbourne, and his sister, thinking that some of Sally's letters might be of use to Mr. Brookes, offered to surrender them upon the receipt of a cheque for one hundred pounds--a very modest sum, she urged, considering the character of the letters, most of which concerned artfully laid plans to meet in the train going or coming from London. Mr. Brookes called on the shade of dear Julia, but he was not a man to be blackmailed--he had made all his money himself, and on that point was immovable. He prepared to leave Southwick. He looked fondly on his glass-houses, and despairingly on his Friths, Goodalls, and Bouguereaus, and he wondered if they would look as well in the new rooms as in the old, and what sum they would realise if he were to include them in the auction; for an auction was necessary. Mr. Brookes did not thus decide to abandon his acres without many a sob, nor is it certain that the final step would have been taken if the gentle builder had not gilded his insidious hand, and if certain rumours were not about that the villas in the Southdown Road were not letting, and that Southwick would never be anything but what it was, a dirty little village--half suburb, half village.
Frank was grieved and troubled at the sad accounts that came to him of Maggie's health; he was perplexed, too, for he knew himself to be the cause, and he longed to relieve and to cure her. It seemed to him that he would give his life to go to her, and comfort her with love, and yet he was impotent to make the least effort to attain the end he desired. He lay in the sad and cruel memory of Lizzie, his mind filled with ignoble visions of her life with the waiter, or with delicate fancies of her beauty amid the summer of the Thames. He mused on her gracious figure and face, illuminated by reflections from the water, set off by the bulrushes and floating blossoms which she so eagerly coveted, and varied by the movements of the waist and shoulders, the round white arm, the trailing scarf, and all the wistful charm of the slumbering evening. He thought of the country light, the sound and smell of cows, of the sparrows in the vine, the cottage looking so cosy amid the foliage, the bit of garden full of old-fashioned flowers, tall lilies, convolvuluses, and marigolds, and the sitting-room full of things belonging to her--her flowers, her books, her music, and he thought of this until his life was sick with desire, and there grew a burning pain about his heart.