CHAPTER XI.
THE BEGINNING OF DOUBT.
Enderby Church clock struck six. They heard every chime, slow and clear in the summer stillness, as they sat in the broad shadow of the cedar, silent all three.
It seemed as if the striking of the clock were the breaking of a spell.
“So late?” exclaimed Castellani, in a cheery voice; “and I promised Mrs. Hillersdon to be back in time to drive to Romsey for the evening service. The old Abbey Church of Romsey, she tells me, is a thing to dream about. There is no eight o’clock dinner at Riverdale on Sundays. Every one goes to church somewhere, and we sup at half-past nine, and after supper there is sometimes extempore prayer—and sometimes there are charades or dumb crambo. C’est selon. When the Prince was there they had dumb crambo. Good-bye. I am almost ashamed to ask if I may ever come again, after having bored you for such an unconscionable time.”
He had the easiest air possible, and seemed totally unconscious of any embarrassment caused by his allusions to the past; and yet in both faces, as he looked from one to the other, he must have seen the strongest indications of trouble.
Mrs. Greswold murmured something to the effect that she would be glad to see him at any time, a speech obviously conventional and unmeaning. Mr. Greswold rose hastily and accompanied him to the hall-door, where the cart still waited for him, the groom fixed as a statue of despondency.
Mr. Castellani was inclined to be loquacious to the last. Greswold was brief almost to incivility. He stood watching the light cart roll away, and then went slowly back to the garden and to his seat under the cedar.
He seated himself without a word, looking earnestly at his wife, whose drooping head and fixed attitude told of deepest thought. So they sat for some minutes in dead silence, Kassandra licking her master’s pendant hand, as he leaned forward with his elbow on his knee, infinitely sorry for him.
Mildred was the first to break that silence.
“George, why did you not tell me,” she began in a low faltering voice, “that I was not your first wife? What reason could there be for concealment between you and me? I so trusted you; I so loved you. Nothing you could have told would have changed me.”