"Mrs. Parr is still here," Littleford said, "and complaining that Miss Wycliffe has deserted her."
The bishop's residence was only about a block away, on the other side of the street, and Leigh saw that Littleford's information caused no particular concern. Seeking significance in everything she did, he wondered whether her early withdrawal contained any element of hope for himself, or whether she were ill. As he recalled the suppressed excitement of her manner, he feared that this latter conjecture might be the true one, and his heart contracted with anxiety. The three men descended the broad steps together, the bishop remarking upon the lateness of the season and the clemency of the air. When they reached the street, he turned with Cobbens in the direction of his house, with an absent-minded though courteous good-night.
Though the leaves of the elms had now in a large measure left the branches, the suggestion of a cathedral nave was still presented to the mind. The equidistant trunks were, as formerly, the supporting pillars, but the vista had suffered a mournful change, as if the roof had suddenly been blown away, leaving the springing ribs a black tracery against the autumnal sky. This ruinous work of the frost was strangely offset by the soft witchery of the breeze, which seemed either a reminiscence of the spring that was past, or a promise of the spring to come. Leigh's thoughts took a turn in harmony with this influence. He began to readjust his first conception of Miss Wycliffe,—she was now Felicity in his unspoken meditations,—and to realise that she was not like a Russian noblewoman, ready to sacrifice all for socialism, as he had at first conceived her. Had she continued to be such a magnificent and heroic creature, he would have loved her less. She gained infinitely more than she lost by this more intimate view. She was no longer a possible reformer and a subject for the historian, but a woman pure and simple, with all a woman's alluring inconsistencies.
Immersed in this new conception, he was startled by a voice and hurrying step behind him, and turned to meet Cardington's outstretched hand and the hospitable offer of a cigar. As they went on together, his colleague commented in his voluminous way upon the evening they had just spent, and before long, with Velasquez as a starting-point, he had launched upon a compendious history of Spain, interspersed with anecdotes of his own travels in that romantic land.
In this way they had almost reached the end of the rows of elms, when they saw before them a man and woman walking with the slow and tentative steps of those absorbed in deep personal conversation. At their nearer approach the woman turned quickly for a moment, said something in a low voice, and then the two hurried abruptly down a side street, whose thicker shadows offered a screen from further observation. Leigh, listening but inattentively to his companion's disquisition and meditating still of Felicity, gave the couple only a fleeting glance, thinking, if he thought of them at all, that they were a maid from one of the neighbouring houses and her lover.
The next moment he realised that he had heard the intonation of Miss Wycliffe's voice, or had imagined it. He would doubtless have thought it mere imagination, some accidental resemblance to which his ear had given identity, had not Cardington's manner registered a sudden emotional disturbance. He paused in his narration, like one smitten with mental atrophy and searching for the word that was about to reach his lips. His position on the inside of the walk offered a barrier between Leigh and the retreating couple, and he gave a curious impression of maintaining that position carefully as they passed the street. Then he resumed his story with something of accentuated intensity. Neither made the slightest comment on the incident.
CHAPTER X
MISTRESS AND MAID
"Miss Felicity," said Cardington, standing before her with a humorous suggestion in his manner of presenting arms to a superior officer, "I have come to perform what is both a duty and a pleasure; I have come, in short, to—pay my bet." With these words he carefully laid a box of candy upon the table.