"Then girls are never prigs?" said Katharine eagerly.
"Bless their hearts," said Ted vaguely; and she did not get any further definition from him that evening.
And so the days grew into weeks, and her life became filled with new interests, and she told herself she was learning to live at last. But she had her bad days, as well; and on these she felt that something was still wanting in her life. And the end of February came, and Paul Wilton had not yet returned to his chambers in Essex Court.
CHAPTER XII
The courts had just risen, and the barristers in their wigs and gowns were hastening through the Temple on the way to their various chambers. It was not a day on which to linger, for a pitiless east wind swept across Fountain Court, making little eddies in the basin of water where the goldfish swam, and swirling the dust into little sandstorms to blind the shivering people who were using the thoroughfare down to the Embankment. The city clocks were chiming the quarter after four, as Paul Wilton came along with the precise and measured step that never varied whatever the weather might be, and mounted the wooden staircase that led to his rooms. A man rose from his easiest chair as he walked into his sitting-room, and they greeted one another in the cordial though restrained manner of men who had not met for some time.
"Sorry you've been waiting, Heaton. Been here long?" said Paul, throwing off his gown with more rapidity than he usually showed.
"Oh, no matter; my fault for getting here too early," returned Heaton cheerily, as he sat down again and pulled his chair closer to the fire. He never entered anybody's house without making elaborate preparations to stay a long while.
"Fact is," he continued, "it's so long since I saw you that, directly I heard you were back, I felt I must come round and look you up. It was young Linton who told me,—you remember Linton? Ran across him in the club, last night; he knows some friends of yours,—Kerry, or Keeley, or some such name as that; just been calling on them, apparently, and they told him you had travelled back with them. Suppose you know the people I mean?"
Paul admitted that he knew the people he had been travelling with, and Heaton rattled on afresh.
"We were talking about you at the club, only the other afternoon; coincidence, wasn't it? Two or three of us,—Marston, and Hallett, and old Pryor. You remember old Pryor, don't you? Stock Exchange, and swears a lot—ah, you know; he wanted to know what had become of you and your damned career; it was a damned pity for the most brilliant man at the bar, and the only one with a conscience, to be wasted on a lot of damned foreigners, and so on. You know old Pryor. Of course I agreed with him, but it wasn't my business to say so."