The Vision of Desire Part 16

However, she replied to Miss Caroline's apologies with the necessary cordiality demanded by the occasion and, ringing for Maria, ordered fresh tea. The rector protested.

"No, no," he said hastily. "You must be far too tired to want visitors when you've only just come off a long journey. We'll pay our call another day."

Brian Tempest was the very ant.i.thesis of his sister--tall and somewhat ascetic-looking, with a face to which one was almost tempted to apply the word beautiful, it was so well-proportioned and cut with the sure fineness of a cameo. His dark hair was sprinkled with grey at the temples, and beneath a broad, tranquil brow looked out a pair of kindly, luminous eyes that were neither all brown nor all grey. Later, when she knew him better, Ann was wont to inform him that his eyes were a "heather mixture--like tweed." Small, fine lines puckered humorously at their corners, and there was humour, too, in the long, thin-lipped mouth.

Robin and Ann brushed aside his protest with a hearty sincerity there was no mistaking. Whatever each of them might feel concerning Miss Caroline, they were in complete accord in the welcome they extended to her brother.

He was no stranger to Robin. The latter had put up at the village inn during the time occupied by Maria Coombe in "cleaning down" the Cottage and making it habitable, and the rector had dropped in to see him in a characteristically informal, friendly fashion on more than one occasion.

The two chatted together while Miss Caroline put Ann through a searching catechism as to her past, present, and future mode of life, including the age at which her parents had died, the particular kind of work she had undertaken during the war--appearing somewhat taken aback when Ann explained that she had driven a car, the making of shirts and m.u.f.flers coming more within the scope of Caroline's own idea as to what was "suitable" work for a young girl--and the length of time she had lived with Lady Susan. The coincidence of Robin's obtaining a post in the neighbourhood of Lady Susan's home impressed her enormously, as fate's unexpected shufflings of the cards invariably do impress those whose existence is pa.s.sed in a very narrow groove.

"It's really most extraordinary!" she declared, scrutinising Ann much as though she suspected her of having somehow juggled matters in order to produce such a phenomenon. "Did you hear that, Brian? Miss Lovell has been living with our dear Lady Susan." She spoke as if she held proprietary rights in Lady Susan. "Isn't it extraordinary that now she and her brother should have come to live so near White Windows?"

"I think it's a very charming happening," replied the rector, "since Oldstone Cottage is even nearer to the rectory!"

He smiled across at Ann--a quick, sympathetic smile that seemed to establish them on a footing of friendly intimacy at once.

"Really," went on Miss Caroline, doggedly pursuing the line of thought to the bitter end of her commonplace mind, "it's as though it were _meant_ in some way--that you should come to Silverquay."

"Probably it was," returned the rector simply, and Ann observed a quiet, dreaming expression come into his eyes--a look of inner vision, tranquilly content and confident.

"Fancy if it turns out like that!" exclaimed Miss Caroline. "It would be a most singular thing, wouldn't it, if it was really _intended_?"

"Not at all," answered Brian composedly. "You're speaking as though you regarded the Almighty as a thoughtless kind of person who would let things happen, just anyhow."

"Brian!" Miss Caroline's tones shuddered with shocked reproach. Her brother often shocked her; he seemed to think of G.o.d as simply and naturally as he might of any other friend. She herself, in the course of her parochial work in the village, habitually represented Him as a somewhat prying and easily offended individual who kept a particularly sharp eye on the inhabitants of Silverquay.

She hastily turned the conversation on to less debatable ground.

"We shall have quite a lot of fresh people in the neighbourhood," she remarked sociably. "Mr. Coventry himself is a stranger to us all, and then there will be a new-comer at the Priory, too."

"Mrs. Hilyard, you mean?" said Robin.

"Yes." Miss Caroline looked full of importance. "I hear she arrives to-day.

The carrier told our cook that he was ordered to meet the four-thirty train this afternoon--to fetch a quant.i.ty of luggage."

"Is there a _Mr._ Hilyard?" asked Ann casually. She could see that Miss Caroline was bursting with gossipy news which she was aching to impart.

"No, she's a widow, I hear, and very wealthy. The furniture that's been coming down by rail is of most excellent quality--most excellent!"

"How do you know, Caroline?" inquired the rector, his eyes twinkling with amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Well, _entirely_ by accident, I happened to be taking a basin of chicken broth to old Mrs. Skinner--you know, she lives in one of the Priory cottages--on the very day the pantechnicons were delivering at the house, and I saw quite a number of the chairs and tables as they were being carried in."

The twinkle in Brian's eyes grew more p.r.o.nounced.

"I'm afraid you must have stood and watched the unloading process, then."

"Well, I suppose I did--just for a minute," she acknowledged, adding with some asperity: "It would be quite fitting if you took a little keener interest in future parishioners, Brian."

"My interest in my future parishioners is quite keen, I a.s.sure you--though I don't know that it extends to their furniture," replied the rector, laughing.

"Oh, well, it's nice to know that some one has taken the Priory who is in a position to keep it up properly," persisted his sister. "Don't you agree, Miss Lovell?"

"Of course," said Ann. "Besides"--smiling across at the rector--"as we're as poor as church mice, it's just as well the new arrival at the Priory should he rich--to even things up."

"I think it's all very interesting," pursued Miss Caroline, still intent on her own train of thought. "Here's Mr. Coventry come home at last to live at Heronsmere--a very eligible bachelor--and with this Mrs. Hilyard, a wealthy widow, living so near by it wouldn't be at all surprising if something came of it."

The rector jumped up, laughing good-humouredly.

"Caroline! Caroline! I must really take you home after that, or Miss Lovell will think Silverquay is a veritable hot-bed of gossip. Coventry hasn't been in the neighbourhood a month, poor man, and here you are trying to tie him up with a lady who doesn't even arrive until this afternoon!"

"Besides," suggested Robin, smiling broadly, "she may be a really disconsolate widow, you know."

Miss Caroline shook her head.

"I don't think so," she answered obstinately. "The furniture didn't look like it. One of the packages was a little torn, and I caught sight of the curtains inside. They were rose colour."

"That was really quite bright of Miss Caroline," observed Ann with some amus.e.m.e.nt, when the rector and his sister had started for home. "Only she didn't know it!"

CHAPTER X

A DISCOVERY

The morning breeze darted in and out of Ann's bedroom like a child tentatively trying to inveigle a grown-up person into playing hide-and-seek. With every puff a big cl.u.s.ter of roses, which had climbed to the sill, swayed forward and peeped inside, sending a whiff of delicate perfume across to where Ann was kneeling, surrounded by trunks and suitcases, unpacking her belongings. Pleasant little sounds of life floated up from outdoors--the clucking of a hen, the stamping of the bay cob as Billy Brewster groomed him, whistling softly through his teeth while he brushed and curry-combed, the occasional honk of a motor-horn as a car sped by in the distance. Then came the beat of a horse's hoofs, stopping abruptly outside the cottage gate.

Ann did not pause in her occupation of emptying a hatbox of its tissue-shrouded contents. Robin had ridden away almost immediately after breakfast, so she merely supposed that, having started early, he had returned early. But a minute later Maria was standing in the doorway of the room, her broad face red with the exertion of hurrying upstairs, her eyes blinking excitedly.

"'Tis Mr. Coventry himself, miss," she announced. "He didn't inquire if any one was at home, but just followed me in and asked me to tell Master Robin he was here."

Ann rose reluctantly from her knees, dusting her hands together.

"All right, Maria, I'll go down and see him. Perhaps he can leave a message with me for Robin. I hope, though," she added with a faint sense of irritation, "that he isn't going to make a habit of dropping in here in the mornings."

Only pausing to push back a stray lock of hair, she ran quickly downstairs and into the living-room.

"I'm so sorry"--she began speaking almost as she crossed the threshold--"but my brother is out."

With a stifled e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n the man standing in the shadow of the tall, old-fashioned chimneypiece wheeled round, and Ann found herself looking straight into the grey eyes of the Englishman from Montricheux. For a moment there was a silence--the silence of utter mutual astonishment, while Ann was wretchedly conscious of the flush that mounted slowly to her very temples. The man was the first to recover himself.

"So," he said, "_you_ are Miss Lovell!"

Something in his tone stung Ann into composure.

"Yes," she replied coolly. "You don't sound altogether pleased at the discovery."