Avery surveyed him also, and as not very favourably impressed. He was a small man with thick sandy eyebrows and shifty uncertain eyes. He looked hard at Piers in answer to the latter's haughty regard, and Avery became aware of a sudden sharp change in his demeanour as he did so. He opened his eyes and stared in blank astonishment.
"Hullo!" he ejaculated softly. "You!"
"What do you mean?" demanded Piers.
It was a challenge, albeit spoken in an undertone. He stood like a man transfixed as he uttered it. There came to Avery a quick hot impulse to intervene, to protect him from some hidden danger, she knew not what, that had risen like a serpent in his path. But before she could take any action, the critical moment was passed. Piers had recovered himself.
He stepped forward. "All right. I will come," he said.
She watched him move away in the direction of the vestry with that free, proud gait of his, and a great coldness came down upon her, wrapping her round, penetrating to her very soul. Who was that man with the shifty eyes? Why had he stared at Piers so? Above all, why had Piers stood with that stiff immobility of shock as though he had been stabbed in the back?
A voice spoke close to her. "Lady Evesham, come and wait by the door!
There is more air there."
She turned her head mechanically, and looked at Lennox Tudor with eyes that saw not. There was a singing in her ears that made the crashing chords of the organ sound confused and jumbled.
His hand closed firmly, sustainingly, upon her elbow.
"Come with me!" he said.