"Why—you'll pardon my mentioning it—you have got the biggest smut on your left cheek that I've seen since I came here. They attain to a remarkable size in Brenthill, have you noticed?" Bertie spoke with eager interest, as if he had become quite a connoisseur in smuts. "Yes, that's it. I'll look Judith up, and tell her you are going with us."
Percival fled up stairs, more discomposed by that unlucky black than he would have thought possible. When he had made sure that he was tolerably presentable he waited by his open door till his fellow-lodgers appeared, and then stepped out on the landing to meet them. Miss Lisle, dressed very simply in black, stood drawing on her glove. A smile dawned on her face when her eyes met Percival's, and, greeting him in her low distinct tones, she held out her white right hand, still ungloved. He took it with grave reverence, for Judith Lisle had once touched his faint dream of a woman who should be brave with sweet heroism, tender and true. They had scarcely exchanged a dozen words in their lives, but he had said to himself, "If I were an artist I would paint my ideal with a face like that;" and the memory, with its underlying poetry, sprang to life again as his glance encountered hers. Percival felt the vague poem, though Bertie was at his elbow chattering about shops, and though he himself had hardly got over the intolerable remembrance of that smut.
When they were in the street Miss Lisle looked eagerly about her, and asked as they turned a corner, "Will this be our way to St. Sylvester's?"
"Yes. I suppose Bertie will make his début next Sunday? I must come and hear him."
"Of course you must," said Lisle. "Where do you generally go?"
"Well, for a walk generally. Sometimes it ends in some outlying church, sometimes not."
"Oh, but it's your duty to attend your parish church when I play there. I suppose St. Sylvester's is your parish church?"
"Not a bit of it. St. Andrew's occupies that proud position. I've been there three times, I think."
"And what sort of a place is that?" said Miss Lisle.
"The dreariest, dustiest, emptiest place imaginable," Percival answered, turning quickly toward her. "There's an old clergyman, without a tooth in his head, who mumbles something which the congregation seem to take for granted is the service. Perhaps he means it for that: I don't know. He's the curate, I think, come to help the rector, who is getting just a little past his work. I don't remember that I ever saw the rector."