“Cecil! Cecil!” she called. “Where are you? Ce—cil! Ce—cil!”
His face reddened.
“I am going to Pescia to visit a sick relative,” he said, addressing Percy Levant, in a low voice. “You will be able to find me at the hotel, if you should require me,” he added, significantly.
“Thank you, my lord,” said Percy Levant, as significantly.
“Ce—cil!” called the voice again.
He bit his lip, and, without another word, turned and left them; but as he passed out of the walk, illumined by the bright rays of the moon, he stopped, and looked back, as Adam might have looked back upon the Paradise he had left forever, as one might have looked for the last time upon a treasure utterly and entirely lost.
Lord Cecil walked toward the carriage, in which Lady Grace and the marquis’ lady housekeeper were sitting, and Lady Grace, leaning through the window, greeted him with a smiling, but scarcely concealed impatience. She was dressed in a traveling costume of Redfern’s, which must have astonished the intelligent foreigner pretty considerably, and looked, for all her famous loveliness, rather tired, worn and ill at ease.
“Why, Cecil, where have you been?” she exclaimed; “I have been calling for the last half-hour.”
“Scarcely as long as that, Grace,” he said, and his voice sounded hoarse and strained. “I have only been a few yards away, and heard you.”
“At least, then, you might have answered,” she retorted. “Do you know how long we are to wait here?”