I did not retaliate with so much as a reproachful glance. Even as a censor Mrs. Portheris was so eminently companionable at the moment. But as we waited for Dicky's return neither of us spoke again. It made too much noise. Minutes passed, I don't know how many, but enough for us to look cautiously round to see if there was anything to sit on. There wasn't, so Mrs. Portheris took my arm. We were not people to lean on each other in the ordinary vicissitudes of life, and even under the circumstances I was aware that Mrs. Portheris was a great deal to support, but there was comfort in every pound of her. At last a faint light foreshadowed itself in the direction of Dicky's disappearance, and grew stronger, and was resolved into a candle and a young man, and Mr. Dod, very much paler than when he left, was with us again. Mrs. Portheris and I started apart as if scientifically impelled, and exclaimed simultaneously, "Where is Brother Demetrius?"
"Nowhere in this graveyard," said Dicky. "He's well upstairs by this time. Must have taken a short cut. I lost sight of him in about two seconds."
"That was very careless of you, Mr. Dod," said Mrs. Portheris, "very careless indeed. Now we have no option, I suppose, but to rejoin the others; and where are they?"
They were certainly not where they had been. Not a trace nor an echo—not a trace nor an echo—of anything, only parallelograms of darkness in every direction, and our little circle of light flickering on the tombs of Anterus, and Fabianus, and Entychianus, and Epis—martyr—and we three within it, looking at each other.
"If you don't mind," said Dicky, "I would rather not go after them. I think it's a waste of time. Personally I am quite contented to have rejoined you. At one time I thought I shouldn't be able to, and the idea was trying."
"We wouldn't dream of letting you go again," said Mrs. Portheris and I simultaneously. "But," continued Mrs. Portheris, "we will all go in search of the others. They can't be very far away. There is nothing so alarming as standing still."
We proceeded along the passage in the direction of our last glimpse of our friends and relatives, passing a number of most interesting inscriptions, which we felt we had not time to pause and decipher, and came presently to a divergence which none of us could remember. Half of the passage went down three steps, and turned off to the left under an arch, and the other half climbed two, and immediately lost itself in blackness of darkness. In our hesitation Dicky suddenly stooped to a trace of pink in the stone leading upward, and picked it up—three rose petals.
"That settles it," he exclaimed. "Isa—Miss Portheris was wearing a rose. I gave it to her myself."
"Did you, indeed," said Isabel's mamma coldly. "My dear child, how anxious she will be!"
"Oh, I should think not," I said hopefully. "I am sure she can trust Mr. Dod to take care of himself—and of us, too, for the matter of that."