No response from Ruth. Mrs. Alwynn took another turn at her prayer-book, and then at the congregation.
"'I am become as it were a monster unto—' Ruth! Ruth!"
Ruth at last turned her head a quarter of an inch.
"Sir Charles Danvers is sitting in the free seats by the font!"
Ruth nailed her eyes to her book, and would vouchsafe no further sign of attention during the rest of the service; and Dare, on the other side, anxious to copy Ruth in everything, being equally obdurate, Mrs. Alwynn had no resource left but to follow the service half aloud to herself, at the times when the congregation were not supposed to join in, putting great emphasis on certain words which she felt applicable to herself, in a manner that effectually prevented any one near her from attending to the service at all.
It was with a sudden pang that Dare, following Ruth out into the sunshine after service, perceived for the first time Charles, standing, tall and distinguished-looking, beside the rather insignificant heir of all the Thursbys, who regarded him with the mixed admiration and gnawing envy of a very young man for a man no longer young.
And then—Charles never quite knew how it happened, but with the full intention of walking back to the rectory with the Alwynns, and staying to luncheon, he actually found himself in Ruth's very presence, accepting a cordial invitation to luncheon at Slumberleigh Hall. For the first time during the last ten years he had done a thing he had no intention of doing. A temporary long-lost feeling of shyness had seized upon him as he saw Ruth coming out, tall and pale and graceful, from the shadow of the church porch into the blaze of the mid-day sunshine. He had not calculated either for that sudden disconcerting leap of the heart as her eyes met his. He had an idiotic feeling that she must be aware that he had run most of the way to church, and that he had contemplated the burnished circles of her back hair for two hours, without a glance at the fashionably scraped-up head-dress of Mabel Thursby, with its hogged mane of little wire curls in the nape of the neck. He felt he still looked hot and dusty, though he had imagined he was quite cool the moment before. To his own astonishment, he actually found his self-possession leaving him; and though its desertion proved only momentary, in that moment he found himself walking away with the Thursbys in the direction of the Hall. He was provoked, angry with himself, with the Thursbys, and, most of all, with Mr. Alwynn, who had come up a second later, and asked him to luncheon, as a matter of course, also Dare, who accepted with evident gratitude. Charles felt that he had not gone steeple-chasing over the country only to talk to Mrs. Thursby, and to see Ruth stroll away over the fields with Dare towards the rectory.
However, he made himself extremely agreeable, which was with him more a matter of habit than those who occasionally profited by it would have cared to know. He asked young Thursby his opinion on E.C. cartridges; he condoled with Mrs. Thursby on the loss of her last butler, and recounted some alarming anecdotes of his own French cook. He admired a pallid water-color drawing of Venice, in an enormous frame on an enormous easel, which he rightly supposed to be the manual labor of Mabel Thursby.
When he rose to take his leave, young Thursby, intensely flattered by having been asked for that opinion on cartridges by so renowned a shot as Charles, offered to walk part of the way back with him.
"I am afraid I am not going home yet," said Charles, lightly. "Duty points in the opposite direction, I have to call at the rectory. I want Mr. Alwynn's opinion on a point of clerical etiquette, which is setting my young spiritual shepherd at Stoke Moreton against his principal sheep, namely, myself."