So light-hearted was Sage that day that she laughed over Luke’s merry description of his chambers as being so many square feet of emptiness, with a cupboard in which he had to sleep.
He gave her a very graphic account of the way in which he had furnished his rooms, of how he walked into Fleet-street every day to have a chop for his dinner, and how the woman who made his bed prepared his breakfast and tea, and then followed a sentence which made Sage laugh merrily—a laugh that was repeated several times during school hours, to the great astonishment of the girls.
“And it is wonderful what a very little while half-a-pound of tea seems to last.”
That was the sentence which amused her, and for a time Cyril Mallow passed from her thoughts.
“What a little time it lasts!” she said merrily, as soon as the school had been dismissed, and she was putting on her hat. “Poor boy! of course, he knows nothing at all about housekeeping; and only to think,” she mused, “how dreadful it must be to go on living every day upon chops.”
She started for home, thinking a great deal of Luke, and telling herself that the fancies that had of late come into her head were as foolish as they were wicked, and that now they were dismissed for ever.
What would Mr Mallow himself think of her? What would Mrs Mallow say? She shivered, and felt that unless she sternly determined never to think of Cyril again, she could not meet the Rector, who had always been so kind and fatherly in his ways.
This had been a nasty dream—a day-dream that had come over her, fostered by Cyril Mallow’s looks and ways. For he had followed her about a great deal; watched for her so that they might meet, and had constantly been coming up to the farm of an evening, where, though ostensibly chatting with her uncle, she could not raise her eyes without encountering his.
She could not have explained it to herself, but somehow Cyril Mallow had seemed to influence her life, being, as it were, the very embodiment of sin silently tempting her to break faith with Luke Ross, and think only of him who had come between.
She told herself constantly, when the thoughts of Cyril Mallow intruded themselves, that she loved Luke better than ever, and that the coming of Cyril was hateful to her; but, all the same, there was a strange light in her eyes whenever she thought of him, and her cheeks would burn and her pulses flutter.