A quiet, drab-looking man had just handed a basket to the guard and was turning away, when he caught sight of Julia’s face and stopped suddenly.
“Bless my soul, Mrs Hallam! Oh! I beg your pardon,” he stammered; “I thought—why, it must be Miss—and Mr Bayle, I—I really—I—”
He could not speak. The tears stood in his eyes, and he stood there shaking away at both of Christie Bayle’s hands for some moments before he became aware of Millicent Hallam’s presence.
“Only to think,” he cried; “but come along.”
“We are going up to the doctor’s,” said Bayle.
“Yes, yes, you shall; but pray come into my place—only for a minute. My wife will be so—so very pleased to see—Ah, my dear, how you have grown!”
James Thickens had become aware that his eccentric behaviour was exciting attention, so he hurried the visitors up to his house.
“Your people are quite well, Mrs Hallam,” he said, hardly noticing that there was a curious distance in her manner towards him. “They’re not expecting you, for the doctor was in the bank this morning, and he would have been sure to tell me.”
Mrs Hallam could not speak. She had felt so strengthened by tribulation, so hardened by trouble, that she had told herself that she could visit King’s Castor and her old home without emotion; but as she alighted from the coach, the sight of the place and their house brought back so vividly the troubles of the past, and her misery as Robert Hallam’s wife, that her knees trembled, and, but for Julia’s arm, she could hardly have gone on.
“Be brave,” whispered a voice at her ear as Thickens prattled on. “This is not like you.”