Her eyes wandered, the speech died for a moment on her lips.
“Rhoda,” she continued, taking both the girl’s hands, “some day, and before long, I shall want your love and that of all my dear friends more than ever. Something—never mind, I shall want it, and I have tried so hard to earn it, because I looked forward and knew. All selfish calculation, you see,” she added, with a nervous laugh, “but then it’s only kindness I ask for. You won’t take yours away? You won’t do anything that will put a distance between us? Nothing foolish? Nothing ill-considered? You see, I’ll put it all on my own account. I can’t spare you, I can’t spare one who loves me!”
Mrs. Clarendon accompanied Rhoda next day to Winstoke station. On her way back she drove to several cottages where it was her custom to call, and where the dwellers had good cause to welcome her. Of sundry things which occurred to her in the course of these visits, she desired to speak with Mr. Vissian, and accordingly stopped at the rectory before driving through her own gates. The front door stood open, and with the freedom of intimacy, she walked straight in and tapped at the parlour door, which was ajar. That room proving empty, she passed to the next, which was the rectors study, and here too tapped. A voice bade her enter—to her surprise an unfamiliar voice. She turned the handle, however, and looked in.
A young man was sitting in the rector’s easy-chair, a book in his hand. He rose on seeing an unknown lady. They looked at each other for a moment, with a little natural embarrassment on both sides. Each rapidly arrived at a conclusion as to the other’s identity, and the smile in both cases expressed a certain interest.
“Pardon me,” Mrs. Clarendon said; “I am seeking the rector, or Mrs. Vissian; Can you tell me if either is at home?”
“The rector, I believe, is still away,” was the reply, “but Mrs. Vissian is in the garden. I will tell her.”
But in the same moment Mrs. Vissian appeared, carrying a basket of fruit. She had garden gloves on her hands. Behind her came Master Percy. There was exchange of greetings; then, in response to a look from Mrs. Clarendon, the youthful matron went through a ceremony of introduction. Mrs. Clarendon and Mr. Kingcote were requested henceforth to know each other, society sanctioning the acquaintance.
“Your name is already familiar to me,” said Isabel; “I have been looking forward to the pleasure of meeting you some day. It was in fear and trembling that I knocked at the sanctuary; Mr. Vissian will congratulate himself on having left a guardian. Those precious volumes; who knows, if there had been no one here——?”
“And how are you, Percy?” she asked, turning to the child, who had come into the library, and holding to him her hand. Percy, instead of merely giving his own, solemnly knelt upon one knee, and raised the gloved fingers to his lips. His mother broke into a merry laugh; Mrs. Clarendon smiled, glanced at Kingcote, and looked back at the boy with surprise.
“That is most chivalrous behaviour, Percy,” she said.
Mrs. Vissian still laughed. Percy, who had gone red, eyed her reproachfully.
“You know I am a page to-day, mother,” he said, “that’s how a page ought to behave. Isn’t it, Mr. Kingcote?”
Isabel drew him to her and kissed him; a glow of pleasure showed through her smiling.
“Percy is a great many different people in a week,” explained Mrs. Vissian. “To-morrow he’ll be a pirate, and then I’m afraid he wouldn’t show such politeness.”
“That shows you don’t understand, mother,” remarked the boy. “Pirates are always polite to beautiful ladies.”
There was more laughter at this. Kingcote stood leaning against the mantelpiece, smiling gravely. Percy caught his eye, and, still confused and rather indignant, went to his side.
“Percy still has ideals,” Kingcote observed, laying his hand on the child’s head.
“Ah, they’re so hard to preserve!” sighed Isabel. Then, turning to Mrs. Vissian, “I want a word or two with you about things that are painfully real. Shall we go into the sitting-room?”
She bowed and said a word of adieu to Kingcote, who stood looking at the doorway through which she had disappeared.
Two days later fresh guests arrived at Knightswell, and for a week there was much riding and driving, lawn-tennis, and straying about the garden and park by moonlight. Then the house of a sudden emptied itself of all its occupants save Ada Warren. Mrs. Clarendon herself went to stay at two country places in succession. She was back again about the middle of September. Ada and she found themselves once more alone together.
Early on the day after her arrival Isabel took a turn of several miles on horseback. She had risen in the morning with somewhat less than her customary flow of spirits, and the exercise would no doubt help her to become herself again. It was a very soft and balmy autumn day; the sky was cloudy, but not with presage of immediate rain, and the distance was wonderfully clear, the rolling downs pencilled on sky of bluish gray. Sounds seemed unnaturally’ audible; she often stayed her horse to listen, finding something very consonant with her mood in the voices of the resting year. When she trotted on again, the sound of the hoofs on the moist road affected her with its melancholy monotony.
“Am I growing old?” she said to herself.
“It is a bad sign when riding fails to put me into good spirits. Perhaps I shall not care to hunt; a good thing, if it prove so. I lose less.”
She was returning to Winstoke by the old road from Salcot East, and presently rode past the cottage at Wood End. A window on the ground floor was open, and, as she went by, Kingcote himself came to it, having no doubt heard the approaching horse. Isabel bowed.
“Why didn’t I stop and speak?” she questioned herself. “It would have been kind. Indeed, I meant to, but my hands somehow wouldn’t obey me at the moment.”
A hundred yards farther she met a village lad, carrying a very unusual burden, nothing less than a book, an octavo volume. Isabel drew rein.
“What have you got there, Johnny Nancarrow?” she asked.
The youngster turned the book over, regarding it much as if it were a live thing.
“Fayther picked un oop corner o’ Short’s Aacre,” he replied. “He says it b’longs to the stranger at Wood End, and I’ve got to taake it there.”
“Let me look.”
It was a volume of the works of Sir Thomas Browne. Turning to the fly-leaf, Isabel saw the name, “Bernard Kingcote,” written there.
“How did it come at the corner of Short’s Acre, I wonder?”
“Fayther says the stranger ligs aboot, spellin’ over his books, and he’ll have left this behind un by hap.”
She turned over the leaves, absently; then her face brightened.
“Don’t trouble to go any farther, Johnny,” she said. “I’ll take the book to its owner myself; I know him. And here’s something for your good intention.”
She turned her horse. The boy stood watching her, a gape of pleasure on his face, and still gazed, cap in hand, till a turn of the road hid her; then he jogged back home, whistling. The sixpence had something to do with it, no doubt; yet more, perhaps, the smile from the Lady of Knightswell.
Isabel rode at a very gentle pace; once she seemed on the point of checking her horse. But she was already within sight of the cottage, and she went at walking pace up to the door. The window still stood open, and she could see into the room, but it was empty. Its appearance surprised her. The flagged floor had no kind of covering; in the middle stood a plain deal table, with a writing desk and books upon it, and against the opposite wall was a bookcase full of volumes. A less luxurious abode it would not have been easy to construct. The sides of the room had no papering, only whitewash; one did not look for pictures or ornaments, and there were none. A scent of tobacco, however, came from within.