"That Mr. Challis didn't go? We saw you from the Links, walking together in the avenue."
Judith turns with handsome languor to Lord Felixthorpe, the other occupant of the motor. "Did she?" she says. "Did you? I mean." Sibyl says: "Thank you for doubting my word! The avenue is visible from the Links."
His lordship is deliberate, as usual. The answer to Judith's first question is, he says, in the affirmative; to the second, in the negative. Identification, even of eminent authors, at a distance in an evening light, is difficult when a time-limit is fixed by the rapid locomotion of the observer. Sibyl's comment, in an undertone, Judith understands to be a caution against prosiness. But a respectful reference by Elphinstone to the many minutes ago that the first gong sounded causes a hurried flight to dress.
Challis felt good about his wife as he opened her letter; and the feeling grew rather than lessened when he saw how short it was. She must be coming, that was clear! But the satisfaction in his face died out as his eye caught the "Yr: aff: wife" at its conclusion. He read the two ill-covered pages twice and again before he threw it down with an angry "Humph!" and set himself to make up for lost time with his toilet.
He only just succeeded in scrambling into his coat in time for the second, or heart-whole, dinner-bell. All right!—he would run, directly. But it would only make him a minute late to glance once more at that letter. Besides, he could do it as he went downstairs. He did so, and ended by pocketing it just in time to appear last in the drawing-room, apologetic.
[CHAPTER XXX]
HOW CHALLIS HAD A NEW NEIGHBOUR AT DINNER AND METAPHYSICS AFTER. HOW HE WAS GUILTY OF EAVESDROPPING, AND MET MISS ARKROYD AFTER IN A LITTLE GARDEN CALLED TOPHET. A FOOL'S PASSION. WHAT ABOUT BOB?