“I seldom look at my audience when I am lecturing,” continued Maitland. “I am too much engrossed with my subject. But I could not help noticing her absorbed attention, so different from that of most women. Why they come to lectures I don’t know.”
“I think I have seen the person you mean,” said Barrett, in a perfectly level voice. “I don’t know who she is, but I saw her waiting under an archway after chapel last Sunday evening. I noticed her because of her extreme good looks. She was evidently watching for someone. When the congregation had all passed out she turned away.”
“I should have liked to thank her,” said Maitland regretfully. “It seems so churlish, so boorish, not to say a word. You have no idea who she was?”
“None,” said Barrett.
Shortly afterwards we took our leave, but not until Maitland had been reminded by the lady’s appearance of a certain charming woman of whom he had seen a good deal at one time in years gone by, who, womanlike, had been unable to understand the claims which the intellectual life make on a man, and who had, in consequence, believed him cold and quarrelled with him to his great regret, because it was impossible for him to dance attendance on her as she expected, and as he would gladly have done had he been a man of leisure. Having warned us young tyros against the danger of frankness in all dealings with women, and how often it had got him into hot water with the sex, he bade us good evening.
As we came out we saw across the court that the melon had been taken in, so judged that Parker had returned. He had. We were so tickled by the way Maitland had accounted for the roses that we quite forgot to score off Parker about them, and actually told him what Maitland supposed.
Barrett then suggested that we should at once form a committee to deliberate on the situation. Parker and I did not quite see why a committee was necessary to laugh at old Maitland, but we agreed.
“Did you really see the woman he means, or were you only pulling Maitland’s leg?” I asked.
“I saw her all right,” retorted Barrett. “Don’t you remember, Parker, how I nudged you when she passed.”