The candle flared up, and went out with a flicker.
Anne turned, and groping her way in the half light, replaced the book in the drawer, and touched the spring which closed it.
IV
At four o’clock, Sylvia Carfax swung the gate of the Vicarage garden behind her, and stepped into the dusty road.
It was nearly a mile to Fairholme Court, and the sun blazed in a sky of cloudless blue, and beat upon her shoulders protected only by a blouse of thin muslin.
Sylvia was just twenty, tall slim, and, as Miss Page suggested very pretty.
In her own mind Anne often wondered when she looked at the girl’s rich black hair, which made such a striking contrast to eyes blue as the sky, that from the shelter of the Vicarage and all it represented such a southern, opulent type of beauty should have emerged.
To reach her destination Sylvia had to walk through the village, past the blacksmith’s, and past the baker’s shop, with its quaint carving over the entrance porch.
Dymfield was an ideally beautiful village, to which even the doctor’s motor-car scarcely brought more than a hint of the rush and hurry and ugliness of much of modern life.
In the gardens of the thatched cottages, summer flowers made a blaze of colour. Roses and honeysuckle clambered over porch and roof.