She had come out not long before from All Saints'; she had listened to
an excellent though unexciting sermon and some extremely beautiful
singing; and even now, saturated with that atmosphere and with the
soothing physical air in which she walked, her anxieties seemed less
acute. There were enough of her acquaintances, too, in groups here and
there--she had to bow and smile sufficiently often--to prevent these
anxieties from reasserting themselves too forcibly. And it may be
supposed that not a creature who observed her, in her exceedingly
graceful hat and mantle, with her fair head a little on one side, and
her gold-rimmed pince-nez delicately gleaming in the sunlight, had the
very faintest suspicion that she had any anxieties at all.
Yet she felt strangely unwilling even to go home.
The men were to set about clearing the drawing-room while she was at
church; and somehow the thought that it would be done when she got
home, that the temple would, so to speak, be cleared for sacrifice,
was a distasteful one.
She did not quite know when the change had begun; in fact, she was
scarcely yet aware that there was a change at all. Upon one point only
her attention fixed itself, and that was the increasing desire she
felt that Laurie Baxter should go no further in his researches under
her auspices.
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