He was served at dinner with the same courtesy as before; but the lay sister’s eyes were red, and her hands shook as she shifted the plates. Neither spoke a word till towards the end of the meal.
“Where is my man?” asked Ralph, who had not seen him since he had gone out with the Abbess a couple of hours before.
The sister shook her head.
“Where is the Reverend Mother?”
Again she shook her head.
Ralph enquired the hour of Vespers, and when he had learnt it, took his cap and went out to look for Mr. Morris. He went first to the little dark outhouse, and peered in over the bottom half of the door, but there was no sign of him there. He could see a horse standing in a stall opposite, and tried to make out the second horse that he knew was there; but it was too dark, and he turned away.
It was a warm October afternoon as he went out through the gatehouse, still and bright, with the mellow smell of dying leaves in the air; the fields stretched away beyond the road into the blue distance as he went along, and were backed by the thinning woods, still ruddy with the last flames of autumn. Overhead the blue sky, washed with recent rains, arched itself in a great transparent vault, and a stream of birds crossed it from east to west.
He went round the corner of the convent buildings and turned up into a meadow beside a thick privet hedge that divided it from the garden, and as he moved along he heard a low humming noise sounding from the other side.
There was a door in the hedge at the point, and at either side the growth was a little thin, and he could look through without being himself seen.
The grass was trim and smooth inside; there was a mass of autumn flowers, grown no doubt for the altar, running in a broad bed across the nearer side of the garden, and beyond it rose a grey dial, round which sat a circle of nuns.