'What about Mr. Ackroyd, dearest?'
'The same. They're not married yet. I dare say they will be soon.'
They spent long hours together by the ebb and flow of the tide. Lydia almost forgot her troubles now and then. As for Thyrza, she seemed to drink ecstasy from the live air.
'It's a good friend to me,' she said several times, looking out upon the grey old deep. 'It's made me well again, Lyddy. I shall always love the sound of it, and the salt taste on my lips!'
CHAPTER XXX
MOVEMENTS
'We are going first of all to the Pilkingtons', in Warwickshire,' said Annabel, talking with Mrs. Ormonde at the latter's hotel in the last week of July. 'Mr. Lanyard—the poet, you know—will be there; I am curious to see him. Father remembers him a 'scrubby starveling'—to use his phrase—a reviewer of novels for some literary paper. He has just married Lady Emily Quell—you heard of it? How paltry it is for people to laugh and sneer whenever a poor man marries a rich woman. I know nothing of him except from his poetry, but that convinces me that he is above sordid motives.'
'Then you do still retain some of your idealism, Bell?'
'All that I ever had, I hope. Why? You have feared for me?'