And though she was glad, she took offence at his
delay. Gathering up the reticule with a nervous sweep of the hand, she
departed from the theatre, her eyes full of tears. And amid all the
wild confusion in her brain one little thought flashed clear and was
gone: the wastefulness of paying for a whole night's entertainment and
then only getting ten minutes of it!
IV
She met Louis Fores high up Bycars Lane, about a hundred yards below
Mrs. Maldon's house. She saw some one come out of the gate of the
house, and heard the gate clang in the distance. For a moment
she could not surely identify the figure, but as soon as Louis,
approaching, and carrying his stick, grew unmistakable even in the
darkness, all her agitation, which had been subsiding under the
influence of physical exercise, rose again to its original fever.
"Ah!" said Louis, greeting her with a most deferential salute. "There
you are. I was really beginning to wonder. I opened the front door,
but there was no light and no sound, so I shut it again and came back.
What happened to you?"
His ingenuous and delightful face, so confident, good-natured, and
respectful, had exactly the same effect on her as before. At the sight
of it Thomas Batchgrew's vague accusation against Louis was dismissed
utterly as the rancorous malice of an evil old man.
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