Page:Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes - The Lodger.djvu/310

Rh Following a sudden impulse, she went back into the sitting-room, and taking a black-headed pin out of her bodice stuck it amid the leaves of the Bible. Then she opened the Book, and looked at the page the pin had marked:—

"My tabernacle is spoiled and all my cords are broken… There is none to stretch forth my tent any more and to set up my curtains."

At last leaving the Bible open, Mrs. Bunting went downstairs, and as she opened the door of her sitting-room Daisy came towards her stepmother.

"I’ll go down and start getting the lodger’s supper ready for you," said the girl good-naturedly. "He’s certain to come in when he gets hungry. But he did look upset, didn’t he, Ellen? Right down bad—that he did!"

Mrs. Bunting made no answer; she simply stepped aside to allow Daisy to go down.

"Mr. Sleuth won’t never come back no more," she said sombrely, and then she felt both glad and angry at the extraordinary change which came over her husband’s face. Yet, perversely, that look of relief, of right-down joy, chiefly angered her, and tempted her to add, "That’s to say, I don’t suppose he will."

And Bunting’s face altered again; the old, anxious, depressed look, the look it had worn the last few days, returned.

"What makes you think he mayn’t come back?" he muttered.

"Too long to tell you now," she said. "Wait till the child’s gone to bed."