Felix had eaten the fruit, and the Baroness had arranged the flowers and returned the baskets and the messages.

On the day that followed that rainy Sunday of which mention has been made, Eugenia determined to go and pay the beneficent invalid a "visite d'adieux;" so it was that, to herself, she qualified her enterprise.
It may be noted that neither on the Sunday evening nor on the Monday morning had she received that expected visit from Robert Acton.

To his own consciousness, evidently he was "keeping away;" and as the Baroness, on her side, was keeping away from her uncle's, whither, for several days, Felix had been the unembarrassed bearer of apologies and regrets for absence, chance had not taken the cards from the hands of design.
Mr.Wentworth and his daughters had respected Eugenia's seclusion; certain intervals of mysterious retirement appeared to them, vaguely, a natural part of the graceful, rhythmic movement of so remarkable a life.

Gertrude especially held these periods in honor; she wondered what Madame M; auunster did at such times, but she would not have permitted herself to inquire too curiously.
The long rain had freshened the air, and twelve hours' brilliant sunshine had dried the roads; so that the Baroness, in the late afternoon, proposing to walk to Mrs.Acton's, exposed herself to no great discomfort.

As with her charming undulating step she moved along the clean, grassy margin of the road, beneath the thickly-hanging boughs of the orchards, through the quiet of the hour and place and the rich maturity of the summer, she was even conscious of a sort of luxurious melancholy.