They are just outside the Rectory gates, from which a party are issuing for a late practice—Cicely, with a roll of music, two or three of her sisters, and a tall curate carrying a lantern, which he suddenly lifts, hearing the horses hoofs, thus revealing to the astonished group Everard's disturbed face within a foot of Lady Saunderson's, cool and undaunted, her hand still resting familiarly on the pommel of his saddle. The curate looks away hastily from the evil tableau, but Cicely bows gravely, and then moves on up the winding hill at the top of which her father's church is picturesquely situated.
Everard reins in, and looks after them with frowning brow; his companion also turns round in her saddle, laughing tantalizingly.
"Which is it to be, Jack? The broad smooth road that leads to destruction and the Park, or the narrow briery path—"
"I'll follow the light. Good-night, Lady Saunderson," he says quickly, wheeling his horse round.
"The light!"—her voice comes back to him mockingly through the gloom. "Take care, mon cher; the curate is swinging it rather knowingly to-night."
On the following morning, when Everard appears at the Rectory, he finds the household in a state of anxious commotion. The bishop is coming the next day, and Lady Emily has been called upon to provide an elaborate breakfast for thirty guests at desperately short notice.
Jack is in every one's way, of course—in the way of the rector, receiving a deputation of church-wardens in his study, in the way of the servants' brooms and dusters, in the way of his hostess, sorting out her best glass and china, superintending soufflés, and mayonnaises.
"You are not hunting to-day, are you, Jack?" she says, with a sigh of irritation which she cannot repress, when a handsome cut-glass decanter slips from his meddlesome fingers to the floor. "What a pity! The day is perfect, is it not?"
"I dare say you wish I were, Lady Emily," he answers, with an awkward laugh; "but, unfortunately for you, it's a blind day. I wonder where Cicely is; I have been looking for her everywhere. She asked me to get her some ferns a few days ago; and I don't know if they're the right sort."