"And what though she is? I should have liked to speak to your mother tonight, but for----"
"Not tonight. I pray you not tonight. Take another opportunity."
The words reassured him.
"Then, Louisa, it is all right between us."
"Yes, yes, of course it is. You offended me, Bede, last January, and I--I have been vexed. I'll write to you as soon as you get back home, and explain everything."
He pressed her hand with a lingering touch, and then released it. There was nothing in the wide world so coveted by Bede Greatorex as that false hand of hers: as many things, fair outside, false within, are coveted by us poor mortals, blind at the best. But Miss Joliffe looked half scared as she left him for a safer part of the room; her eyes and manner were alike restless. Bede followed her, and they were talking together at intervals in an undertone during the rest of the evening. Louisa being evidently ill at ease, but striving to conceal it.
At a quarter to eleven Mr. Bede Greatorex took his departure. In passing up High Street, his cousin's lodgings were on the opposite side of the way. He momentarily halted and stepped off the pavement as if he would have crossed to go in, and then hesitated, for the sitting-room was in darkness.
"The light's out: he's gone to bed, I dare say," said Mr. Greatorex, speaking aloud. "No good to disturb him." And a tradesman, who happened to be fastening his side-door and had got it about an inch open, overheard the words Mr. Greatorex having doubtless been quite unaware that he spoke to an auditor.
Towards the top of High Street he met Mr. Kene, the barrister. The latter, after expressing some surprise at seeing him, and assuming he had come direct from Mr. Ollivera's, asked whether the latter was in.
"In and in bed," replied Mr. Greatorex.