Charnock walked back to his hotel that night in a frame of mind entirely strange to him. He was inclined to rhapsodise; he invented and rejected various definitions of woman; he laughed at the worldly ignorance of the dowager. "A woman, madam "--he imagined himself to be lecturing her--"is the great gift to man to keep him clean and bright like a favourite sword." He composed other and no less irreproachable phrases, and in the midst of this exhilarating exercise was struck suddenly aghast at the temerity of his own conduct that night, at the remembrance of his persistency. However, he was not in a mood to be disheartened. The dawn took the sky by surprise while he was still upon his way. The birds bustled among the leaves in the gardens, and a thrush tried his throat, and finding it clear gave full voice to his song. The blackbirds called one to the other, and a rosy light struck down the streets. It was morning, and he stopped to wonder whether Miranda was yet asleep. He hoped so, intensely, for the sake of her invaluable health.
But Miranda was seated by her open window, listening to the birds calling in the Park, and drawing some quiet from the quiet of the lawns and trees; and every now and then she glanced across her shoulder to where a torn white glove lay upon the table, as though she was afraid it would vanish by some enchantment.
But the next day Miranda packed her boxes, and when Charnock called upon Lady Donnisthorpe, he was informed that she had returned in haste to Ronda. Charnock was surprised, for he remembered that Mrs. Warriner had expressed a doubt whether she would ever return to Ronda, and wondered what had occurred to change her mind. But the surprise and bewilderment were soon swallowed up in a satisfaction which sprang from the assurance that Miranda and he were after all to be neighbours.
CHAPTER VII
[IN WHICH MAJOR WILBRAHAM DESCRIBES THE STEPS BY WHICH HE ATTAINED HIS MAJORITY, AND GIVES MIRANDA SOME PARTICULAR INFORMATION]
A month later at Ronda, and a little after midday. In the cool darkness of the Cathedral, under the great stone dome behind the choir, Miranda was kneeling before a lighted altar. That altar she had erected, as an inscription showed, to the memory of Ralph Warriner, and since her return from England she had passed more than an ordinary proportion of her time in front of it.
This morning, however, an unaccountable uneasiness crept over her. She tried to shake the sensation off by an increased devoutness, but though her knees were bent, there was no prayer in her mind or upon her lips. Her uneasiness increased, and after a while it defined itself. Someone was watching her from behind.
She ceased even from the pretence of prayer. Her heart fluttered up into her throat. She did not look round, she did not move, but she knelt there with a sinking expectation, in the light of the altar candles, and felt intensely helpless because their yellow warmth streamed full upon her face and person, and must disclose her to the watching eyes behind.
She knelt waiting for a familiar voice and a familiar step. She heard only the grating of a chair upon the stone flags beyond the choir, and a priest droning a litany very far away. Here all was quiet--quiet as the eyes watching her out of the gloom.
At last, resenting her cowardice, she rose to her feet and turned. At once a man stepped forward, and her heart gave a great throb of relief, as she saw the man was a stranger.