"Good gracious! she's writing something on the flyleaf of her prayer-book," he said to himself presently. "I hope she's not going to send it to me. I won't take it. She ought to be ashamed of herself!"
Miss Davenant was indeed busily engaged in pencilling something on a blank sheet of paper; and, having finished, she folded it deftly into a cocked-hat, wrote a few words on the outside, and placed it between the leaves of her book.
Then, as the congregation rose for the Psalms, she gave a meaning glance at the blushing and scandalised Mr. Bultitude and by dexterous management of her prayer-book shot the little cocked-hat, as if unconsciously, into the next pew.
By a very unfortunate miscalculation, however, the note missed its proper object, and, clearing the partition, fluttered deliberately down on the floor by Dulcie's feet.
Paul saw this with alarm; he knew that at all hazards he must get that miserable note into his own possession and destroy it. It might have his name somewhere about it; it might seriously compromise him.
So he took advantage of the noise the congregation made in repeating a verse aloud (it was not a high church) to whisper to Dulcie: "Little Miss Grimstone, excuse me, but there's a—a note in the pew down by your feet. I believe it's intended for me."
Dulcie had seen the whole affair and had been not a little puzzled by it, a clandestine correspondence being a new thing in her short experience; but she understood that in this golden-haired girl, her elder by several years, she saw her rival, for whom Dick had so basely abandoned her yesterday, and she was old enough to feel the slight and the sweetness of revenge.
So she held her head rather higher than usual, with her firm little chin projecting wilfully, and waited for the next verse but one before retorting, "Little Master Bultitude, I know it is."
"Could you—can you manage to reach it?" whispered Paul entreatingly.
"Yes," said Dulcie, "I could."