She wondered whether the Canon had made a similar deduction.
He was silent during their long drive home, but it was the silence of thoughtfulness rather than that of depression. The Canon’s intimates could generally interpret without difficulty the nature of his silences.
On the morning following he called Lucilla into the study.
“I had no word with Adrian last night,” he said wistfully. “I saw you talking to him, my dear. Did he tell you what day he is coming home again?”
“No, Father.”
“I confess that I am perturbed. Are these new friends of his gentlefolk, are they church people, are they even Christians?” said the Canon, walking up and down. “If only the boy would be more unreserved with me! One is so terribly anxious.”
“I don’t think he wants to be reserved. He really has no serious suggestion to offer, as to the future.”
“My poor lad! He is not sufficiently in earnest. I have blinded myself to it long enough. His early piety and simplicity were so beautiful that perhaps I dwelt upon them as tokens of future growth more than I should have done. But there was a levity of tone about these intimates of his that displeased me greatly. It must cease, Lucilla—this intercourse must cease.”
Lucilla dreaded few things more than such resolutions, from which she knew that her father, at whatever cost to himself or to anybody else, never swerved.
“The Admastons are neighbours,” she pointed out.