He did not come to see her regularly.

Sometimes two weeks went past, sometimes three, and he had not come.

In fact, Lawrence endeavored to come only when he could do so openly.
"I hate to deceive father more than I can help," he told Elmira, but she did not understand him fully.
She was a woman for whom the voluntary absence of a lover who yet loves was almost an insoluble problem, and in that Lucina was not unlike her.

She was not naturally deceptive, but, when it came to love, she was a Jesuit in conceiving it to sanctify its own ends.
The suspense, the uncertainty, as to her lover coming or not, was beginning to tell upon her.

Every nerve in her slight body was in an almost constant state of tension.
It was just a week from that day that Jerome and Elmira, being seated in meeting, saw Lucina enter with her parents and her visiting friends.