“No; but to come home from church with another person.”
“Ah, I see; I might have known you were fully provided with alternatives. And is the other person coming home this way?”
Lily laughed again. “That’s just what I don’t know; and to find out, it is my business to get to church before the service is over.”
“Exactly; and it is my business to prevent your doing so; in which case the other person, piqued by your absence, will form the desperate resolve of driving back in the omnibus.”
Lily received this with fresh appreciation; his nonsense was like the bubbling of her inner mood. “Is that what you would do in such an emergency?” she enquired.
Selden looked at her with solemnity. “I am here to prove to you,” he cried, “what I am capable of doing in an emergency!”
“Walking a mile in an hour—you must own that the omnibus would be quicker!”
“Ah—but will he find you in the end? That’s the only test of success.”
They looked at each other with the same luxury of enjoyment that they had felt in exchanging absurdities over his tea-table; but suddenly Lily’s face changed, and she said: “Well, if it is, he has succeeded.”
Selden, following her glance, perceived a party of people advancing toward them from the farther bend of the path. Lady Cressida had evidently insisted on walking home, and the rest of the church-goers had thought it their duty to accompany her. Lily’s companion looked rapidly from one to the other of the two men of the party; Wetherall walking respectfully at Lady Cressida’s side with his little sidelong look of nervous attention, and Percy Gryce bringing-up the rear with Mrs. Wetherall and the Trenors.