"Very polite, I'm sure!" thought Miss Blake, resentfully.
But the next moment she heard him leave it and come towards the sitting-room.
"I will wish you good night too, Miss Blake," he said, offering his hand. "Pray ring for anything you may require; you are more at home, you know, than we are," he concluded with a slight laugh.
"Are you going to bed also, Sir Karl?"
"I? Oh no. I am going into my smoking-room. I have a letter to write."
Now Miss Blake resented this frightfully. Lucy might go to bed; it was best for her as she was fatigued; but that Sir Karl should thus unceremoniously leave her to her own company at nine o'clock, she could not pardon. As to letter writing, the post had gone out. It was evident he thought nothing of her, even as a friend; nothing.
Dropping her forehead upon her hands, she sat there she knew not how long. When she looked up it was nearly dark. Her thoughts had wandered to Mr. Cattacomb, and she wondered whether he would be arriving by the last train.
Throwing a shawl over her shoulders, Miss Blake went into the garden, and thence by one of the small private gates into the lonely road. It was still and solitary. The nightingales were singing now, and she paced along, lost in thought, past the Maze and onwards.
She had reached nearly as far as the road to Foxwood, not having met a soul, when the advance of two or three passengers from the station told her the train was in. They turned off to the village, walking rapidly: but neither of them was the expected clergyman.
"What can have kept him?" she murmured, as she retraced her steps.