Sir Algernon took the little hand.
“Good-bye,” he said again, then added, as though half against his will, “After all, I’m not particularly sorry that you won the game.”
He walked off quickly in the opposite direction, and passed from Sydney’s life as suddenly as he had entered it.
“I hope you did not mind my speaking to him, Katharine,” she said, as the two went through the cool, green, peaceful Close together. “I could not have done it, if—if—he had not been so shabby. But I think if—when he gets well, and we tell him, that St. Quentin will be glad.”
“I believe you were right,” Katharine said quietly, and the two passed into the Deanery together.
A great hush seemed upon everything, and as the girls sat in the deep window of the drawing-room when dinner was over, the whole world seemed to wear a look of listening. It was one of those wonderfully mild spring evenings which March sometimes gives us as a foretaste of the summer that is coming. Katharine let the fire burn low, and did not close the window.
There was no breeze to stir the daffodils and tulips, which had lost their colour in the fading of the light: across the Close the grey Cathedral stood silent and solemn, looking down with grave, infinite pity upon the fleeting troubles and anxieties of the people living their little lives around its walls.
To and fro across the shadowy turf the Dean walked, with his hands behind him, deep in thought. The soft, sweet-scented spring darkness had fallen, but Katharine would not ring for lights. The girls sat quietly together, their hands clasped in the dimness.
Into the silence came the mellow chime of the cathedral clock: the four quarters, which had passed while they were sitting there, pealed out one after another, and then the nine deep strokes of the hour.