He heard the change in his own voice, and knew by her quick side-glance that she had heard it too.
"Please let me see everything that is compatible with my getting a car to Hanaford by six."
"Well, then—the night-school next," he said with an effort at lightness; and to shake off the importunity of his own thoughts he added carelessly, as they walked on: "By the way—it seems improbable—but I think I saw Dr. Wyant yesterday in a Westmore car."
She echoed the name in surprise. "Dr. Wyant? Really! Are you sure?"
"Not quite; but if it wasn't he it was his ghost. You haven't heard of his being at Hanaford?"
"No. I've heard nothing of him for ages."
Something in her tone made him return her side-glance; but her voice, on closer analysis, denoted only indifference, and her profile seemed to express the same negative sentiment. He remembered a vague Lynbrook rumour to the effect that the young doctor had been attracted to Miss Brent. Such floating seeds of gossip seldom rooted themselves in his mind, but now the fact acquired a new significance, and he wondered how he could have thought so little of it at the time. Probably her somewhat exaggerated air of indifference simply meant that she had been bored by Wyant's attentions, and that the reminder of them still roused a slight self-consciousness.
Amherst was relieved by this conclusion, and murmuring: "Oh, I suppose it can't have been he," led her rapidly on to the Eldorado. But the old sense of free communion was again obstructed, and her interest in the details of the schools and nursery now seemed to him only a part of her wonderful art of absorbing herself in other people's affairs. He was a fool to have been duped by it—to have fancied it was anything more personal than a grace of manner.
As she turned away from inspecting the blackboards in one of the empty school-rooms he paused before her and said suddenly: "You spoke of not seeing Westmore again. Are you thinking of leaving Cicely?"
The words were almost the opposite of those he had intended to speak; it was as if some irrepressible inner conviction flung defiance at his surface distrust of her.