“Yes, I thought I might just as well hang about till the train came in; I was waiting for the seed, you see; and when the train did come, Mr. John Temple came with it, and he got into the carriage from the Hall and drove away.”
“And was he alone?” asked Mr. Churchill, with scarcely suppressed agitation.
“Yes, quite alone; he had no servant or nothing. The porter carried his portmanteau to the carriage; I am quite certain he had no one with him.”
Mr. Churchill asked no more questions. He also now understood the motive of his neighbor’s call, but he was not a man to gratify idle curiosity. He drew in his firm lips; he made up his mind at once to see John Temple.
He did not even tell his wife the news he had just heard. Mrs. Churchill had more than once annoyed him by the way she had spoken, or rather insinuated, her doubts concerning May’s marriage. So he was determined to say nothing more about it until he knew the true cause of May’s long silence and absence.
It was too late to go to the Hall that night, but as early as ten o’clock next morning he mounted his horse and rode to Woodlea. John Temple had prepared his mind for this visit; had told himself that if Mr. Churchill did not call on him, that he himself would go to Woodside, and tell the truth as far as he knew it. Yet, while he and Mrs. Temple were still sitting at the breakfast table, when a servant entered the room and announced that Mr. Churchill had arrived and was waiting to see him, John Temple was conscious that his heart sank within him. But the next moment, with an effort, he nerved himself for the meeting, and rose quietly from the table.
“Ask Mr. Churchill to go into the library,” he said.
The servant bowed and disappeared, and as he did so Mrs. Temple started up excitedly.
“How horrible for that man to come,” she half-whispered. “Whatever will you say to him?”