The letter was despatched, and with feverish impatience he awaited a reply.
Nine days passed, and he heard nothing.

Half that delay sufficed to bring out all the self-tormenting capacities of a nature such as his.
To his mother's conjectural explanations he could lend no ear.
Doubtless Lady Whitelaw (against whom, for subtle reasons, he was already prejudiced) had taken offence; either she would not reply at all, or presently there would come a few lines of polite displeasure, intimating her disinclination to aid his project.

He silently raged against 'the woman'.

Her neglect was insolence.

Had she not delicacy enough to divine the anxiety natural to one in his dependent position?
Did she take him for an every-day writer of mendicant appeals?
His pride fed upon the outrage and became fierce.
Then arrived a small glossy envelope, containing a tiny sheet of very thick note-paper, whereon it was written that Lady Whitelaw regretted her tardiness in replying to him (caused by her absence from home), and hoped he would be able to call upon her, at ten o'clock next morning, at the house of her sisters, the Misses Lumb, where she was stopping for a day--she remained his sincerely.
Having duly contorted this note into all manner of painful meanings, Godwin occupied an hour in making himself presentable (scornful that he should deem such trouble necessary), and with furiously beating heart set out to walk through Twybridge.