With a hot flush mounting to her brow, Betty dropped her offering upon the salver and deftly palmed the envelope, not daring to raise her eyes. The woman beside her was intently fumbling in her purse and the swift furtive movement of the girl had been unobserved.
The bearer of the salver emitted a gasping breath that was almost a snort, and as the stranger's bank-note was added to the rest he bowed and passed on with obvious relief to the next pew.
Wedging the envelope between the pages of her prayer book, Betty watched as the smug-faced man joined his colleague who had passed down the opposite row and marched beside him with grave dignity back to the altar rail. The solemnity, the calm spiritual peace had vanished for the girl and the warm, incense-laden air stifled her as the recessional died away in the dim recesses of the vestry, and she knelt mechanically for the final prayer.
The slow, crowded egress from the edifice tortured her beyond measure and when at length she stood in the dazzling sunshine on the steps she drew a deep breath of profound relief.
It was a blustery day and the treacherous March wind caught her roughly in its grasp, but she faced it boldly as though welcoming the physical exertion.
Amazement at the daring manner in which the missive had been placed in her hands had momentarily numbed her faculties. Its donor was the last person from whom she would have expected to receive it. His strutting importance, his bland, patronizing air of conscious dignity and social eminence accorded ill with her preconceived idea of the type of person she would meet.
His predecessors passed in quick, mental review before her; the weak-chinned, downy-mustached scion of society in the opera box, the timorous, fragile, exquisite lady with the orchids, and now this rotund, pragmatical pillar of the church! What mysterious bond held these three, widely diversified as they were, in a common fellowship with Mrs. Atterbury and her coterie?
So absorbed was she in her reflections that Betty gave only a passing glance at a man who had elbowed his way through the throng at the church steps and in apparent inadvertence followed her as she walked north from Brinsley square and turned eastward in her footsteps. She was vaguely aware that someone boarded the Highmount car when she did, alighting behind her at Wellesley Place. Ignorant of the city as she had claimed to be, she could not fail in the realization that the directions given her to follow were curiously roundabout ones and had taken her several unnecessary miles out of her way. Why had Mrs. Atterbury chosen this route for her?
Her mind was filled with this new problem and she did not observe her pursuer enter a taxicab as she boarded a red bus. It was only when she noted that the smaller vehicle deliberately stalked the larger, halting when the bus stopped and following it doggedly through the mazes of Sunday traffic, that her interest was aroused, and as one after another of the passengers descended until she was left in sole possession of the conveyance and still the taxi cab clung tenaciously behind, a suspicion came to her that she might be the subject of espionage.
A memory came to her of the circuitous route followed by the limousine in bringing her home from the Café de Luxe. Could the motive have been to elude pursuit? Had the same purpose prevailed in Mrs. Atterbury's mind when she issued these devious directions for her messenger's return?