“How late you are, Mr. Hayle!” she exclaimed. “I suppose you don’t care about balls though.”
“Not much. I have hardly any experience of them. But I could not come earlier to-night. I have been at Notcotts till half an hour ago,” he answered.
“Is anything wrong there?”
“No,—this is the evening I have fixed for my class there. That is what I wanted to ask you about. We are rather at a loss for some books. Would you mind letting me look over again some of those you offered me before?”
“Certainly,” said Cicely, “you can have any of them you like.”
Then Mr. Hayle proceeded to relate to her, as he had got into the habit of doing, the small chronicle of his difficulties, hopes, and fears. Cicely listened with interest—she had found it quite possible to like and respect the boy-faced clergyman, and there was plenty of common ground on which they could meet without jarring. But half an hour before, she could not have listened without impatience to the history of the Notcott’s night-school, the shortcomings of the choir, the ever-increasing necessity for the renovation of Lingthurst church. Whence had the sunshine come again? Trevor had called her his “dear old Cit; it was all nonsense and fancy” about his being changed.
Mr. Hayle did not dance, but he escorted Miss Methvyn in to supper instead. Then he had to resign his charge to the partner to whom she was engaged for the next dance.
It happened to be Mr. Dangerfield. The poor young man could talk of nothing but Geneviève.
“She’s so awfully pretty,” he said. “What a pity she can’t speak English. I didn’t know she was your cousin till just now, when one of the officers from Haverstock asked me if I couldn’t get him an introduction to Miss Methvyn; and being such old friends, of course I said yes. And we were steering away towards you, you know, when he holla’ed out to me to stop, and I found out it was your cousin he meant. He said the Miss Methvyn who was engaged to Fawcett, so of course I thought it was all right. She—your cousin I mean—was dancing with Fawcett at the time, so Captain Burnett had made the mistake. Fawcett put it all right, but I couldn’t catch your cousin’s name—Castle, isn’t it? only that doesn’t sound like a French name.”
“Casalis,” corrected Cicely, smiling. She had known young Dangerfield all her life, and had rather liked him for his unaffected good nature, and been tolerant of his matter of-fact prosiness. This evening however, long before her dance with him was over, she began to think he must surely have grown heavier and more stupid than of old. Could he find nothing else to talk about than Geneviève and that absurd mistake of Captain Burnett’s?