“Mrs. Clarendon wishes you to call tomorrow or next day; pray do so. I can’t quite make out that mistake of Grubb’s; he must have calculated from an edition in which the lines are differently arranged. I shall communicate with him. Lucy, my love, I beg of you to see that those books are dispatched the first thing to-morrow; the dilatory scoundrel always keeps me waiting, and there’s a ‘Cursor Mundi’ I want to work at.”
Kingcote suddenly rose and stepped to Mrs. Vissian to bid her good night.
“Going, what?” exclaimed the rector, turning round, with an end of his napkin in each hand. “But I wanted to ask your opinion about—— You don’t look well, my dear fellow; what is it?”
“Nothing, nothing. I’ve tired myself with walking. I’ll get home.”
“You have an umbrella? Then you must take one of mine. But, I tell you, you must; it’s raining like a waterspout. Shall I walk with you?”
Kingcote had gone off into the darkness with inaudible replies.
“What is the matter with him?” asked the rector, standing in surprise. “Is he going to be ill? An awkward look-out in that cottage, with not a soul near.”
“He was very strange when he came,” Mrs. Vissian remarked. “He said he’d been walking, and yet wasn’t aware that it had rained.”
“Wasn’t aware? Curious fellow, Kingcote.”
“Don’t you think, Walter, there’s something about him we don’t understand—something in the circumstances of his life, I mean?”