Shaking her head, she broke a second match from her card, struck it, and when it burned clear, stooped to seek her umbrella. It was lying between two beams almost at her feet, and she grasped it thankfully just as her light was blown out by the breeze.
Then, with groping feet, she made her way carefully toward the inshore end of the wharf, and soon found herself in the streets of Southwark, between London Bridge and the pillory. From this point she knew her way to the grove where the Panchronicon had landed, and thither she now turned a resolute face, walking as swiftly as she dared by the light of the now unobscured moon.
"If Copernicus Droop ketches up with me," she muttered, "I'll make him stop ef I hev to poke my umbrella in his spokes."
CHAPTER XVI
HOW SIR GUY KEPT HIS TRYST
For one hour before sunset of that same day Phœbe had been patiently waiting alone behind the east wall of the inn garden. As she had expected, her step-mother had accompanied her father to London that afternoon, and she found herself free for the time of their watchfulness. She did not know that this apparent carelessness was based upon knowledge of another surveillance more strict and secret, and therefore more effective than their own.
The shadow of the wall within which she was standing lengthened more and more rapidly, until, as the sun touched the western horizon, the whole countryside to the east was obscured.
Phœbe moved out into the middle of the road which ran parallel to the garden wall and looked longingly toward the north. A few rods away, the road curved to the right between apple-trees whose blossoms gleamed more pink with the touch of the setting sun.
"Nothing—no one yet!" she murmured. "Oh, Guy, if not for love, could you not haste for life!"