She waited till the steps went past, and then spoke.
“Chris will be riding, father.”
He nodded abruptly, and she saw by his manner that it was not Chris he was expecting. She understood then that he still had hopes of his other son, but they sat on into the night in the deep stillness, till the fire burned low and red, and the stars she had seen at the horizon wheeled up and out of sight above the window-frame.
Then he suddenly turned to her.
“You must go to bed, Mary,” he said. “I will wait for Chris.”
She lay long awake in the tiny cupboard-room that the labourer and his wife had given up to her, hearing the horses stamp in the cold shed at the back of the house, and the faces moved and turned like the colours of a kaleidoscope. Now her father’s eyes and mouth hung like a mask before her, with that terrible look that had been on them as he faced Ralph at the end; now Ralph’s own face, defiant, icy, melting in turns; now Margaret’s with wide terrified eyes, as she had seen it in the parlour that afternoon; now her own husband’s. And the sweet autumn woods and meadows lay before her as she had seen them during that silent ride; the convent, the village, her own home with its square windows and yew hedge—a hundred images.
There was a talking when she awoke for the last time and through the crazy door glimmered a crack of grey dawn, and as she listened she knew that Chris was come.
It was a strange meeting when she came out a few minutes later. There was the monk, unshaven and pale under the eyes, with his thinned face that gave no smile as she came in; her father desperately white and resolved; Mr. Morris, spruce and grave as usual sitting with his hat between his knees behind the others;—he rose deferentially as she came in and remained standing.
Her father began abruptly as she appeared.