‘Do I seem so very dull?’
‘Dull, by no means. But sage and sober and reticent—and exactly what I like in my friend, because it contrasts with my own habits. All the better that merriment lies below it. Goodnight, Miss Yule.’
He strode off and in a minute or two turned his head to look at the slight figure passing into darkness.
Marian’s hand trembled as she tried to insert her latch-key. When she had closed the door very quietly behind her she went to the sitting-room; Mrs Yule was just laying aside the sewing on which she had occupied herself throughout the lonely evening.
‘I’m rather late,’ said the girl, in a voice of subdued joyousness.
‘Yes; I was getting a little uneasy, dear.’
‘Oh, there’s no danger.’
‘You have been enjoying yourself, I can see.’
‘I have had a pleasant evening.’
In the retrospect it seemed the pleasantest she had yet spent with her friends, though she had set out in such a different mood. Her mind was relieved of two anxieties; she felt sure that the girls had not taken ill what she told them, and there was no longer the least doubt concerning the authorship of that review in The Current.