Time passes quickly, we are told, when we are hard at work. And doubtless this is true while the time in question is the present. But to look back upon time of which every day and every hour have been fully occupied, gives somewhat the feeling of a closely-printed volume when one has finished reading it. It seems even longer than in anticipation. To Despard Norreys, when at the end of two busy years he found himself again in England, it appeared as if he had been absent five or six times as long as was really the case.
He had been a week in England, and was still detained in town by details connected with the work he had successfully accomplished. He was under promise to his sister to run down to Markerslea the first day it should be possible, and time meanwhile hung somewhat heavily on his hands. The waters had already closed over his former place in society, and he did not regret it. Still there were friends whom he was glad to meet again, and so he not unwillingly accepted some of the invitations that began to find him out.
One evening, after dining at the house of the friend whose influence had obtained for him the appointment which had just expired, he accompanied the ladies of the family to an evening party in the neighbourhood. He had never been in the house before; the faces about him were unfamiliar. Feeling a little “out of it,” he strolled into a small room where a select quartette was absorbed at whist, and seated himself in a corner somewhat out of the glare of light, which, since his illness, rather painfully affected his eyes.
Suddenly the thought of Maisie Fforde as he had last seen her seemed to rise before him as in a vision.
“I wonder if she is married,” he said to himself. “Sure to be so, I should think. Yet I should probably have heard of it.”
And even as the words formed themselves in his mind, a still familiar voice caught his ear.
“Thank you. Yes, this will do nicely. I will wait here till Mabel is ready to go.”
And a lady—a girl, he soon saw—came forward into the room towards the corner where he was sitting. He rose at once; she approached him quickly, then with a sudden, incoherent exclamation, made as if she would have drawn back. But it was too late; she could not, if she wished, have pretended she did not see him.
“Mr Norreys,” she began; “I had no idea—”
“That I was in England,” he said. “No, I have only just returned. Pardon me for having startled you, Miss Fforde—Lady Margaret, I mean. I on my side had no idea of meeting you here or—”