CLEVE visited the old Priory next day, but there had been no one to look at it since. He took a walk in the warren and killed some innocent rabbits, and returned an hour later. Still no one. He loitered about the ruins for some time longer, but nothing came of it. The next day in like manner, he again inspected the Priory, to the wonderment of Mrs. Hughes, who kept the keys, and his yacht was seen till sunset hovering about Penruthyn. He drove into the town also now and then, and looked in on the shop-keepers, and was friendly as usual; and on these occasions always took a ramble either over the hill or by the old Malory road, in the direction of the Dower House.

But the Malory people seemed to have grown still more cautious and reserved since the adventure of Penruthyn Priory. Sunday came, and Miss Anne Sheckleton sat alone in the Malory pew.

Cleve, who had been early in his place, saw the old lady enter alone and the door shut, and experienced a pang of disappointment — more than disappointment, it amounted to pain.

If in the dim light of the Malory seat he had seen, once more, the Guido that haunted him, he could with pleasure have sat out three services; with three of the longest of good Mr. Splayfoot’s long sermons. But as it was, it dragged wofully — it made next to no way; the shrilly school-children and the deep-toned Mr. Bray sang more verses than ever to the solemn drone of the organ, and old Splayfoot preached as though he’d preach his last. Even Cleve’s watch, which he peeped at with a frequency he grew ashamed of, limped and loitered over the minutes cruelly.

The service would not have seemed so nearly interminable if Cleve had not resolved to waylay and accost the lady at the other side — even at the risk of being snubbed for his pains; and to him, full of this resolve, the interval was miserable.

When the people stood up after the blessing, Cleve Verney had vanished. From the churchyard he had made his exit, by the postern door, from which he and his enamoured friend, Sedley, had descended a week before to the narrow road, under the town wall, leading to Malory.

Down this he walked listlessly till he reached that lonely part of the road which is over-arched by trees; and here, looking over the sloping fields toward the sea, as if at the distant mountains, he did actually waylay Miss Sheckleton.

The old lady seemed a little flurried and shy, and would, he fancied, have gladly been rid of him. But that did not weigh much with Cleve, who, smiling and respectful, walked by her side after he had made his polite salutation. A few sentences having been first spoken about indifferent things, Cleve said —

“I have been to the old Priory twice since I met you there.”

“Oh!” said Miss Anne Sheckleton, looking uneasily toward Malory. He thought she was afraid that Sir Booth’s eye might chance to be observing them.

Cleve did not care. He rather enjoyed her alarm, and the chance of bringing matters to a crisis. She had not considered him much in the increased jealousy with which she had cloistered up her beautiful recluse ever since that day which burned in his memory, and cast a train of light along the darkness of the interval. Cleve would have been glad that the old man had discovered and attacked him. He thought he could have softened and even made him his friend.

“Do you never purpose visiting the ruin again?” asked Cleve. “I had hoped it interested you and Miss Fanshawe too much to be dropped on so slight an acquaintance.”

“I don’t know. Our little expeditions have been very few and very uncertain,” hesitated Miss Sheckleton.

“Pray, don’t treat me quite as a stranger,” said Cleve, in a lone and earnest tone; “what I said the other day was not, I assure you, spoken upon a mere impulse. I hope, I am sure, that Miss Fanshawe gives me credit at least for sincerity.”

He paused.

“Oh! certainly, Mr. Verney, we do.”

“And I so wish you would tell her that I have been ever since thinking how I can be of any real use — ever so little — if only to prove my anxiety to make her trust me even a little.”

“I think, Mr. Verney, it is quite enough if we don’t distrust you; and I can assure you we do not,” said the spinster.

“My uncle, though not the sort of man you may have been led to suppose him — not at all an unkind man — is, I must allow, a little odd and difficult sometimes — you see I’m not speaking to you as a stranger — and he won’t do things in a moment; still if I knew exactly what Sir B............