“What did she do?”

“She looked at him long—­and long.  She turned proudly away—­in the sea-blue eyes were heavy and stormy tears, which seeing——­”

“Ah, he saw them?” from Miss Vanderpoel.

“Yes.  And seizing her in his arms caught her to his breast, calling for a priest to make them one within the hour.  I am quoting the chronicle.  I was fifteen when I read it first.”

“It is spirited,” said Betty, “and Red Godwyn was almost modern in his methods.”

While professing composure and lightness of mood, the spell which works between two creatures of opposite sex when in such case wrought in them and made them feel awkward and stiff.  When each is held apart from the other by fate, or will, or circumstance, the spell is a stupefying thing, deadening even the clearness of sight and wit.

“I must slink back now,” Betty said, rising.  “Will you slink back with me to give me countenance?  I have greatly liked Red Godwyn.”

So it occurred that when Nigel Anstruthers saw them again it was as they crossed the lawn together, and people looked up from ices and cups of tea to follow their slow progress with questioning or approving eyes.

CHAPTER XXXV

THE TIDAL WAVE

There was only one man to speak to, and it being the nature of the beast—­so he harshly put it to himself—­to be absolutely impelled to speech at such times, Mount Dunstan laid bare his breast to him, tearing aside all the coverings pride would have folded about him.  The man was, of course, Penzance, and the laying bare was done the evening after the story of Red Godwyn had been told in the laurel walk.

They had driven home together in a profound silence, the elder man as deep in thought as the younger one.  Penzance was thinking that there was a calmness in having reached sixty and in knowing that the pain and hunger of earlier years would not tear one again.  And yet, he himself was not untorn by that which shook the man for whom his affection had grown year by year.  It was evidently very bad—­very bad, indeed.  He wondered if he would speak of it, and wished he would, not because he himself had much to say in answer, but because he knew that speech would be better than hard silence.

“Stay with me to-night,” Mount Dunstan said, as they drove through the avenue to the house.  “I want you to dine with me and sit and talk late.  I am not sleeping well.”

They often dined together, and the vicar not infrequently slept at the Mount for mere companionship’s sake.  Sometimes they read, sometimes went over accounts, planned economies, and balanced expenditures.  A chamber still called the Chaplain’s room was always kept in readiness.  It had been used in long past days, when a household chaplain had sat below the salt and left his patron’s table before the sweets were served.  They dined together this night almost as silently as they had driven homeward, and after the meal they went and sat alone in the library.