“Because I’m always being watched; I’m just like a person in a cell, don’t you know, with one of those little windows cut in the door, through which the sentinel outside can always look in; I am never alone.”
“It must be dreadful,” the judge answered, with conviction.
“Wait till you have seen Priscilla Jane in her night-gown,” said Cicely, with equal conclusiveness.
“Heaven forbid!” said the judge, with a shrill little chuckle. Then he turned and looked at her; she seemed so much like her old self.
“You will let me go, grandpa?” She put up her face and kissed him.
“If you will promise to come back soon.”
“Of course I will.”
He let her go on alone. She looked back and smiled once or twice; then he lost sight of her; he returned to the beach by a roundabout way, in order to deceive Priscilla Jane; he was almost as much pleased as Cicely to outwit her.
Cicely went on through the forest; she walked slowly, not stopping to gather flowers as usual. After a while her vague glance rested upon two figures in the distance. She stopped, and as, by chance, she was standing close beside the trunk of a large tree, her own person was concealed. The two figures were coming in her direction, they drew nearer, they paused; and then there followed a picture as old as Paris and Helen, as old as Tristram and Isolde: a lover taking in his arms the woman he adores. And it was Paul Tennant who was the lover; it was Eve who looked up at him with all her heart in her eyes.
A shock passed over Cicely, the expression of her face changed rapidly as her gaze remained fixed upon Eve: first, surprise; then a strange quick anger; then perplexity. She left her place, and went rapidly forward.