She laughed.
“I’ve believed in him myself before now,” owned John, having a sudden memory of a black and white goat. “Only subsequent reflection invariably shows one that he isn’t acting on his own account, as he would have us believe.”
“I fancy you’re right,” said she reflectively. “If one really considers the seemingly haphazard happenings, one does see that there is always a connecting link backwards and forwards. Nothing—no happening—is entirely isolated.”
“It is not,” said John. “Only sometimes the connecting link is so fine as to be almost imperceptible.”
John had in mind a tiny faint link, so faint that it was only in the light of subsequent events that it had become visible. If, on a certain March afternoon, he had not yielded to a sudden inspiration to enter the Brompton Oratory, would he now have been standing in this garden? Was not that the tiny, almost imperceptible link with all the events of the last ten days? Oh, he had reason enough for his assured statement, he had proved it to the hilt.
He wanted, he badly wanted, to tell her, to speak of that tiny connecting link. But reason again assuring him that to do so would be to drag the moment too abruptly forward, he thrust the desire aside. And then, from the distance, came the sound of a silver gong.
Rosamund got up from the balustrade.
“Tea,” said she. “Granny must have returned.”
CHAPTER XXIX
AN UNEXPECTED LETTER
John sat down to breakfast at about nine o’clock, or thereabouts, the following Wednesday morning. It was the Feast of Our Lady’s Assumption; he had been to Mass at Delancey Chapel.