We walked down an alley of cypress trees without speaking, then we stopped, for the sound of a gong came roaring from the house.
It was the luncheon gong, so said Geraldine, and I suddenly woke up from a reverie to remember that I was not in the seventeenth but the nineteenth century.
CHAPTER XIII
"YOU WERE NOT DRESSED LIKE THIS"
The old clergyman who lives at Ashworth has just been. He comes twice a week and eats a biscuit and drinks a glass of wine, and tells me we should all think on the future life, or the life to come. He asked me what I was writing, and I said—nothing.
Well—that day I had luncheon all alone. Where that other strange being had luncheon, or whether she had luncheon at all, I don't know; I had luncheon alone, and I had chops for luncheon.
What did James Wilder mean by sending me here to be driven mad? What was driving me mad? Why, Geraldine was. I had sprung at one bound into the most fabulous world of love. I could have eaten that snail she lifted on to the leaf, just because she touched it.
The old butler was meandering round the room with a dish of vegetables in his hand.
"James," I said.