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 CHAPTER LIX

A SUBSTITUTE

We left Sir George watching in the cold, under a clump of yews, for the chance of seeing his wife's shadow cross one of the lighted windows in the gallery. He remained there far longer than he supposed. So many thoughts were passing through his mind, so many misgivings for the future, so many memories of the past, that he was conscious neither of bodily discomfort nor lapse of time, the chill night-wind nor the waning evening. At length he roused himself from his abstraction with a smile of self-contempt, and, wrapping his cloak around him, would have departed at once, but that his attention was arrested by a muffled figure passing swiftly and stealthily into the garden through the very door he had been watching so long. A thrill of delight shot through him at the possibility of its being Cerise, followed by one of anger and suspicion, as he thought she might, in sheer despair at her lover's absence, be preparing to follow Florian in his flight. But the figure walked straight to his hiding-place, and long before it reached him, even in the doubtful light, he recognised the firm step and graceful bearing of the Marquise.

How did she know he was there? How long could she have been watching him? He felt provoked, humiliated; but all such angry feelings dissolved at the sound of her sweet voice, so like her daughter's, while she asked him softly, as if it was the most natural thing in the world that he should be waiting outside within twenty paces of his own house—

"George, what is it? You are disturbed; you are