Page:Watch and Ward (Boston, Houghton, Osgood and Company, 1878).djvu/144

Rh lounging in his chair while I put it into his hand. O, he knows what he 's about. He is pretentious, with all his nonchalance. He finds the prayer-book rather meagre fare for week-days; so he consoles himself with his pretty parishioners. To be a parishioner, you need n't go to his church."

But in spite of Mrs. Keith's sceptical criticism, these young persons played their game in their own way, with wider moves, even, and heavier stakes, than their shrewd hostess suspected. As Nora, for the present, declined all invitations, Mrs. Keith in the evening frequently went out alone, leaving her in the drawing-room to entertain Hubert Lawrence. Roger's illness furnished a grave undercurrent to their talk and gave it a tone of hazardous melancholy. Nora's young life had known no such hours as these. She hardly knew, perhaps, just what made them what they were. She hardly wished to know; she shrank from breaking the charm with a question. The scenes of the past year had gathered into the background like a huge distant landscape, glowing with color and swarming with life; she seemed to stand with her friend in the shadow of a passing cloud, looking off into the mighty picture, caressing its fine outlines, and lingering where the haze of regret lay purple in its hollows. Hubert, meanwhile, told over the legends of town and tower, of hill and stream. Never, she fondly fancied, had a young couple conversed with less of narrow exclusiveness; they took all history, all culture, into their confidence; the radiant light of an immense horizon seemed to shine between them. Nora had felt perfectly satisfied; she seemed to live equally in every need of her being, in soul