‘Those were cruel times,’ said Father Riccoboni, who presently, at luncheon, showed that he could thoroughly appreciate the tender mercies of the present or Christian era. Logan watched him, and once when, something that interested him being said, the Father swept the table with his glance without raising his head, a memory for a fraction of a moment seemed to float towards the surface of Logan’s consciousness. Even as when an angler, having hooked a salmon, a monster of the stream, long the fish bores down impetuous, seeking the sunken rocks, disdainful of the steel, and the dark wave conceals him; then anon is beheld a gleam of silver, and again is lost to view, and the heart of the man rejoices—even so fugitive a glimpse had Logan of what he sought in the depths of memory. But it fled, and still he was puzzled.
Logan loafed out after luncheon to a seat on the lawn in the shade of a tree. They were all to be
driven over to an Abbey not very far away, for, indeed, in July, there is little for a man to do in the country. Logan sat and mused. Looking up he saw Miss Willoughby approaching, twirling an open parasol on her shoulder. Her face was radiant; of old it had often looked as if it might be stormy, as if there were thunder behind those dark eyebrows. Logan rose, but the lady sat down on the garden seat, and he followed her example.
‘This is better than Bloomsbury, Mr. Logan, and cocoa pour tout potage: singed cocoa usually.’
‘The potage here is certainly all that heart can wish,’ said Logan.
‘The chrysalis,’ said Miss Willoughby, ‘in its wildest moments never dreamed of being a butterfly, as the man said in the sermon; and I feel like a butterfly that remembers being a chrysalis. Look at me now!’
‘I could look for ever,’ said Logan, ‘like the sportsman in Keats’s Grecian Urn: “For ever let me look, and thou be fair!”’
‘I am so sorry for people in town,’ said Miss Willoughby. ‘Don’t you wish dear old Milo was here?’
Milo was the affectionate nickname—a tribute to her charms—borne by Miss Markham at St. Ursula’s.
‘How can I wish that anyone was here but you?’ asked Logan. ‘But, indeed, as to her being here, I should like to know in what capacity she was a guest.’