"Good!" said Maryllia, nodding approvingly--"But go slowly through the village, won't you? There are so many dear little children always playing about."
He slackened speed at once, and with a weird toot-tootling of his horn guided the car on at quite a respectable ambling-donkey pace.
"You said the church?"
"Yes, please!"
Another minute, and she had alighted.
"Thanks so much!" she said, smiling up into his goggle-guarded eyes. "Will you rush back for the others, please? And--and--may I ask you a favour?"
"A thousand!" he answered, thinking what a pretty little woman she was, as he spoke.
"Well--don't--even if they want you to do so,--don't bring Lord Roxmouth or Mr. Marius Longford back to the Manor. They are Sir Morton Pippitt's friends and guests--they are not mine!"
A faint flicker of surprise passed over the aristocratic motor- driver's features, but he made no observation. He merely said: "All right! I'm game!"
Which brief sentence meant, for Lord Charlemont, that he was loyal to the death. He was not romantic in the style of expressing himself,--he would not have understood how to swear fealty on a drawn sword--but when he said--'I'm game,'-it came to the same thing. Reversing his car, he sped away, whizzing up the road like a boomerang, back to Badsworth Hall. Maryllia watched him till he was out of sight,--then with a sigh of relief, she turned and look wistfully at the church. Its beautiful architecture had the appearance of worn ivory in the mellow radiance of the late afternoon, and the sculptured figures of the Twelve Apostles in their delicately carved niches, six on either side of the portal, seemed almost life-like, as the rays of the warm and brilliant sunshine, tempered by a touch of approaching evening, struck them aslant as with a luminance from heaven. She lifted the latch of the churchyard gate,--and walking slowly with bent head between the rows of little hillocks where, under every soft green quilt of grass lay someone sleeping, she entered the sacred building. It was quite empty. There was a scent of myrtle and lilies in the air,--it came from two clusters of blossoms which were set at either side of the gold cross on the altar. Stepping softly, and with reverence, Maryllia went up to the Communion rails, and looked long and earnestly at the white alabaster sarcophagus which, in its unknown origin and antiquity, was the one unsolved mystery of St. Rest. A vague sensation of awe stole upon her,--and she sank involuntarily on her knees.