The Bishop rose, and gave Gilbert Arundel a very different greeting from that which he had granted Lord Maythorne.
"My dear young friend, welcome for your mother's sake, always welcome, and for your own. How could you doubt it? Why stand on ceremony? But we are in some distress," he said, with a sly twinkle in his eye; "we have lost a young lady: she vanished into thin air as we left the cathedral. Perhaps some knight-errant has carried her off. Ah! I see you know something about her. Well, sit down; and, Barker," to one of the servants, "Miss Falconer's place next Mr. Arundel's."
The Bishop dearly loved a little love affair, and he fancied he descried one in "the air."
It was a great trial of Joyce's self-possession when the door of the dining-room was opened for her by a servant, and she had to pass to her place at the long dining-table. The Bishop's son came to the rescue, making room for her by standing up and showing her the vacant place.
"I am sorry I was late," she said.
"It is a lovely day," was the rejoinder. "I do not wonder that you took a turn after service."
"Yes," said Mrs. Law, kindly. "I saw your cousin in the cathedral, and I thought it probable that you would walk home with her."
"No," Joyce said, in a low voice, "I did not go home with Charlotte."
One person at least appreciated the honesty of this confession, and Gilbert told himself that it was a part of Joyce's crystal transparency of character, that she would not even allow an assertion about herself to pass if it were not absolutely true.
When Joyce was sitting after dinner, with Mrs. Law and several ladies, in the long gallery, the Bishop's son brought her a message.