What was he thinking of?
There seemed to be a special facility offered her by a power external to herself in the circumstance that Mr.Swancourt had proposed to leave home the night previous to her wished-for day.

Her father seldom took long journeys; seldom slept from home except perhaps on the night following a remote Visitation.

Well, she would not inquire too curiously into the reason of the opportunity, nor did he, as would have been natural, proceed to explain it of his own accord.

In matters of fact there had hitherto been no reserve between them, though they were not usually confidential in its full sense.

But the divergence of their emotions on Stephen's account had produced an estrangement which just at present went even to the extent of reticence on the most ordinary household topics.
Elfride was almost unconsciously relieved, persuading herself that her father's reserve on his business justified her in secrecy as regarded her own--a secrecy which was necessarily a foregone decision with her.
So anxious is a young conscience to discover a palliative, that the ex post facto nature of a reason is of no account in excluding it.
The intervening fortnight was spent by her mostly in walking by herself among the shrubs and trees, indulging sometimes in sanguine anticipations; more, far more frequently, in misgivings.