He did not speak; he watched her while she wrapped the head in its folds of silk.
"Aphrodite never had so true a priestess, nor one so pure," he thought, and a strange feeling of sadness came over him, and he thanked her rather abruptly for showing him her treasure, and they went silently back through Sir Timothy's rooms, and down the stair; and in the Italian parlor he said good-by at once, and left.
The wind had got up and blew freshly in his face. There would be a gale before morning. It suited his mood. He struck across the park, but instead of making for the haw-haw, he turned into Cheiron's little gate. He wanted understanding company, he wanted to talk cynical philosophy, and he wanted the stimulus of his old master's biting wit.
But when he got there, he found Cheiron very taciturn—contributing little more than a growl now and then, while he smoked his long pipe and played with his beard. So at last he got up to go.
"I have made up my mind to marry Mrs. Cricklander, Master," he said.
"I supposed so," the Professor replied dryly. "A man always has to convince himself he is doing a fine thing when he gives himself up to be hanged."
CHAPTER XVII
John Derringham reached Wendover—by the road and the lodge gates—in an impossible temper. He had left the orchard house coming as near to a quarrel with his old master as such a thing could be. He absolutely refused to let himself dwell upon the anger he had felt; and if Fate had given him a distinct and pointed chance to ask the fair Cecilia for her lily hand, when he knocked at her sitting-room door before dinner, he would no doubt have left the next day—summoned again to London by his Chief—an engaged man. But this turn of events was not in the calculations of Destiny for the moment, and he found no less a person than Mr. Hanbury-Green already ensconced by his hostess's side. They were both smoking and looked very comfortable and at ease.