It was on a Saturday that Clare had discussed with Laline the invitation to the bank, a day that Laline ever afterwards remembered, bleak and wintry, the sky a chill gray, deepening to saffron near the horizon. On Saturday and Wednesday afternoons Mrs. Vandeleur drove out, sometimes with her secretary and sometimes alone. On this particular day she was bidden to a conference between patrons of the "occult" and distinguished sceptics at the house of a well-known woman of title interested in every new craze. Before four o'clock Clare also left the house to go to one of the many "At homes" at which her beauty and liveliness rendered her a most popular guest; and Laline found herself for the first time since her arrival in London alone and free, with at least three hours at her own disposal.
Twenty-one Queen Mary Crescent was by no means a cheerful house after dusk, being full of creaking boards and a general "eeriness." Laline wanted to think, and had never lost her old love of wandering about alone in the open air. Within ten minutes of Clare's departure therefore she emerged from the house in her blue serge gown and a long fur-lined black cloak, and struck at once from the High Street into Kensington Gardens, her cheeks rosy under the touch of frosty air, and her heart beating with a strange excitement, which seemed to presage some unusual experience.
CHAPTER XII.
Laline met very few people in Kensington Gardens that afternoon.
The wind was keen, and every now and then drifting snowflakes told of the coming storm. The Round Pond was covered with a thin sheet of ice, and upon the green roof of Kensington Palace the snow was lightly strewn.
Laline walked fast, with eyes fixed steadfastly in front of her, absorbed in her own thoughts, holding her cloak together round her, and bending her supple frame to the wind.
It was her first walk unattended in the Gardens, and her errant footsteps led her to a long leafless avenue, through which she walked rapidly, listening to the wind in the branches above her head.
Suddenly mingling with the sound came a voice close behind her, upon hearing which she stopped with a smothered cry and turned a startled face towards the speaker.