CHAPTER XVIII
LEE slept more soundly that night than she had expected, and awoke the next morning feeling very much ashamed of herself. Her determination to leave England for a time was unaltered, but she would have given a great deal to have come to an amicable understanding with Cecil. She had treated him abominably, and he was the last person she desired to wound. When she was in exactly the right temper she would make herself as legible to him as she could, and, as he was the quickest of men, he would understand as much as any mere man could, and would agree that the separation—she might reduce it to six months—was advisable for them both. He would do a good deal of thinking during her absence and the result could not fail to be happy.
She went out on the moor to luncheon and was so amiable and charming and so pointedly bent upon charming no man but her husband that Cecil’s brow cleared and he sunned himself in her presence. But he was seriously disturbed, and she saw it. She had awakened him roughly out of what was doubtless beginning to look like a dream, and he was not the man to close his eyes again until he had quite determined of what stuff his dreams were made. But when they were alone he pointedly avoided the subject.
The Gearys arrived next morning, and it seemed to Lee that the whole Abbey was filled with Coralie’s light laughter. She wanted to see everything at once, and the four Californians spent the entire day moving restlessly over the house and grounds.
“Just think,” cried Coralie, flitting about the ghostly gloom of the crypt. “I’m in an Abbey—an old stone thing a thousand years old—oh! well, never mind, a few hundred years more or less don’t matter. It’s old, and it’s stone, and it’s carved, and it’s haunted, and grey-hooded friars were once just where I am. I think it’s lovely. Isn’t it, Ned? Isn’t it?”
But Mr. Geary smiled with the true Californian’s mere toleration of all things non-Californian. Coralie knew that smile, and tossed her head.
“Well, thank Heaven I’m not quite so provincial as that!” she cried with sarcasm. “I’m going to keep you abroad three years. I never in my life saw any one so improved as Randolph.”
Whereupon Mr. Geary coloured angrily and strode off in a huff.
“Tell me some more,” demanded Coralie. “Don’t slam the door, Teddy. Hasn’t there ever really been a hooded friar seen stalking through this crypt at night?”
“They do say—You know all the dead earls lie here for a week; and on alternate nights the tenantry and the servants sit up. Those people are superstitious, and they vow that they see shadowy forms way over there; of course lamps are hung on the columns near by—perhaps I can show you a whole chest full of the silver lamps that have been used for centuries. They make the rest of the crypt fairly black, and it is easy enough to imagine anything. The interment always takes place at midnight, by torchlight, even when there is a moon; and there is popularly supposed to be an old abbot telling his beads just behind the procession.”