It was not altogether false. She had fallen from a dizzy height, but she had found something of rest and security in the valley below. And as prisoners cut off from all the larger interests of their lives pet the plants and creatures which chance to lighten their captivity, so did Sissy begin to take pleasure in little gayeties for which she had not cared in old days. She could sleep now at night without apprehension, and she woke refreshed. There was a great blank in her existence where the thunderbolt fell, but the cloud which hung so blackly overhead was gone. The lonely life was sad, but it held nothing quite so dreadful as the fear that a day might come when Percival and his wife would know that they stood on different levels--that she could not see with his eyes nor understand his thoughts--when he would look at her with sorrowful patience, and she would die slowly of his terrible kindness. The lonely life was sad, but, after all, Sissy Langton would not be twenty-one till April.
Percival read her letter, and asked Godfrey Hammond how she really was. "Tell me the truth," he said: "you know all is over between us. She writes cheerfully. Is she better than she was last year?"
Hammond replied that Sissy was certainly better. "She has begun to go out again, and Fordborough gossip says that there is something between her and young Hardwicke. He is a good fellow, and I fancy the old man will leave him very well off. But she might do better, and there are two people, at any rate, who do not think anything will come of it--myself and young Hardwicke."
A month later Hammond wrote that there was no need for Percival to excite himself about Henry Hardwicke. Mrs. Falconer had taken Sissy and Laura to a dance at Latimer's Court, and Sissy's conquests were innumerable. Young Walter Latimer and a Captain Fothergill were the most conspicuous victims. "I believe Latimer rides into Fordborough every day, and the captain, being stationed there, is on the spot. Our St. Cecilia looks more charming than ever, but what she thinks of all this no one knows. Of course Latimer would be the better match, as far as money goes--he is decidedly better-looking, and, I should say, better-tempered--but Fothergill has an air about him which makes his rival look countrified, so I suppose they are tolerably even. Neither is overweighted with brains. What do you think? Young Garnett cannot say a civil word to either of them, and wants to give Sissy a dog. He is not heart-whole either, I take it."