Then, with a sigh of content, she sank down upon the top step of the flight she had reached and gently shook her head, smiling.
"Too much Mary Burton, Miss Phœbe!" she murmured.
She had recollected her precious box of letters. Of these there was one which made it entirely clear that Mary Burton and her lover were destined to escape this peril; for it was written from him to her after their flight from England. All her fears fell away, and she was left free to taste the sweetness of the new revelation without the bitterness in which that revelation had had its source.
Very dear to Phœbe in after life was the memory of the few moments which followed. With her mind free from every apprehension, she leaned her shoulder to the wall and turned her inward sight in charmed contemplation upon the new treasure her heart had found.
How small, how trifling appeared what she had until then called her love! Her new-found depth and height of tender devotion even frightened her a little, and she forced a little laugh to avert the tears.
Through the open door her eyes registered in memory the casual movements without, while her consciousness was occupied only with her soul's experience. But soon this period of blissful inaction was sharply terminated. Her still watching eyes brought her a message so incongruous with her immediate surroundings as to shake her out of her waking dream. She became suddenly conscious of a nineteenth-century intruder amid her almost medieval surroundings.
All attention now, she sat quickly upright and looked out again. Yes—there could be no mistake—Copernicus Droop had passed the door and was approaching the principal entrance of the inn on the other side of the courtyard.
Phœbe ran quickly to the door and, protecting her eyes with one hand from the flood of brilliant sunlight, she called eagerly after the retreating figure.
"Mr. Droop—Mr. Droop!"
The figure turned just as Phœbe became conscious of a small crowd of street loafers who had thronged curiously about the courtyard entrance, staring at the new-comer's outlandish garb. She saw the grinning faces turn toward her at sound of her voice, and she shrank back into the hallway to evade their gaze.