"Not for a service, or on any urgent matter,"--replied John--"I left a book in the vestry which I want to refer to,--that's all."
"Fetch it," said Maryllia--"I'll wait for you here."
He glanced at her--and saw that her lips trembled, and that she was still on the verge of tears. He hurried off at once, realising that she wanted a minute or two to recover herself. His heart beat foolishly fast and uncomfortably,--he wondered what had grieved or annoyed her.
"Poor little soul!" he murmured, reflecting on a conversation with which Julian Adderley had regaled him the previous day, concerning some of the guests at Abbot's Manor--"Poor, weary, sweet little soul!"
While Maryllia, during his brief absence was thinking--"I won't cry, or he'll take me for a worse fool than I am. He looks so terribly intellectual--so wise and cool and calm!--and yet I think--I THINK he was rather pleased to see me!"
She smoothed her face into a smile,--gave one or two more reproving taps to her eyelids with her morsel of a kerchief, and was quite self-possessed when he returned, with a worn copy of the Iliad under his arm.
"Is that the book you wanted?" she asked.
"Yes--" and he showed it to her--"I admit it had no business to be left in the church."
She peeped between the covers.
"Oh, it's all Greek!"--she said--"Do you read Greek?"
"It is one of the happiest accomplishments I learned at college,"-- he replied. "I have eased many a heartache by reading Homer in the original."
She looked meditative.
"Now that's very strange!" she murmured--"I should never have thought that to read Homer in the original Greek would ease a heartache! How does it do it? Will you teach me?"
She raised her eyes--how beautiful and blue they were he thought!-- more beautiful for the mist of weeping that still lingered about their soft radiance.
"I will teach you Greek, if you like, with pleasure!"--he said, smiling a little, though his lips trembled--"But whether it would cure any heartache of yours I could not promise!"
"Still, if it cures YOUR heartaches?" she persisted.
"Mine are of a different character, I think!"--and the smile in his eyes deepened, as he looked down at her wistfully upturned face,--"I am getting old,--you are still young. That makes all the difference. My aches can be soothed by philosophy,--yours could only be charmed away by--"