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She suddenly held out her hand with a gesture that seemed to him frankly impatient, as if she were anxious to be gone. "And my gloves," she said. "I think I gave them to you." He produced them reluctantly. "I had hoped you would forget them, Miss Wycliffe."
He did not reason his positions out like Wycliffe; he was a suggestive essayist rather than a constructive philosopher; and, radical though he was in some of his views, he held firm to what he regarded as the fundamental articles of the Christian faith. He believed in the redemptive value of the death of Christ.
Leigh suspected that the subject might be a sore one with him, and that he thoroughly disapproved of Miss Wycliffe's odd charity. When a talker is silent, his silence has the tactile quality of Egyptian darkness, and so it now appeared in Cardington. Concerning Miss Wycliffe herself they made no comment, doubtless because they were thinking of her so intently.
Wycliffe petitioned against the bill, and it was rejected; not so much perhaps out of tenderness for the reformer, as because the Lower House was excited by the controversy with the pope; and being doubtfully disposed towards the clergy, was reluctant to subject the people to a more stringent spiritual control.
What a meaning that prayer must have gained when the readers of the book were burned with the copies round their necks, when men and women were executed for teaching their children the Lord's Prayer and Ten Commandments in English, when husbands were made to witness against their wives, and children forced to light the death-fires of their parents, and possessors of the banned Wycliffe Bible were hunted down as if they were wild beasts!
As they entered the drawing-room, Miss Wycliffe closed her book with satisfied emphasis and rose to meet them. The bishop was there also, standing in the background and waiting his turn. His eyes were on his daughter rather than on his guests, with a pride that was evident at even a casual glance. Again Leigh encountered that look which had so deeply attracted him.
If Miss Wycliffe turned out to be some one else, she would hold no interest for him, not even if she possessed all the indescribable qualities of which Cardington had hinted. Speculating upon this possibility, he scarcely listened now to the words of his companion swinging on ahead, as they came brokenly to his ears in the gusts of wind.
Once these walls were covered with valuable shrines, pictures, and tapestries, and costly jewels glittered everywhere. There was one huge emerald which was said to cure diseases of the eyes. Here came John Wycliffe, the great reformer, at the summons of the Archbishop of Canterbury, to answer for the publication of his new doctrines.
"On the street corner, at ten cents a look," Emmet answered. "Then this will be something of a revelation to you. Miss Wycliffe is going to bring up a party to-night to use the telescope, but it's early yet." The other made no comment upon this statement, and the reason of his silence remained obscure; whether it were due to indifference, or to a fear of disclosing a cherished emotion.
"But how was I to know," Miss Wycliffe put in, "that the return of that sermon from the bottom of the barrel would coincide with the appearance of my new hat?" "It was just that lack of cooperation between you and your right reverend father which scandalised the congregation," Cardington commented. "It was a beautiful hat," she mused regretfully. "Every one admired it."
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