to say farewell
when I take my departure--and that won't be just yet. Now I wonder
who that old chap was? Knew some one of Ransford's name once, did he?
Probably Ransford himself--in which case he knows more of Ransford than
anybody in Wrychester knows--for nobody in Wrychester knows anything
beyond a few years back. No, Dr. Ransford!--no farewells--to anybody! A
mere departure--till I turn up again."

But Bryce was not to get away from the old house without something in
the nature of a farewell. As he walked out of the surgery by the side
entrance, Mary Bewery, who had just parted from young Bonham in the
garden and was about to visit her dogs in the stable yard, came along:
she and Bryce met, face to face. The girl flushed, not so much from
embarrassment as from vexation; Bryce, cool as ever, showed no sign of
any embarrassment. Instead, he laughed, tapping the hand-bag which he
carried under one arm.

"Summarily turned out--as if I had been stealing the spoons," he
remarked. "I go--with my small belongings. This is my first reward--for
devotion."

"I have nothing to say to you," answered Mary, sweeping by him with a
highly displeased glance. "Except that you have brought it on yourself."

"A very feminine retort!" observed Bryce. "But--there is no malice in
it? Your anger won't last more than--shall we say a day?"

"You may say what you like," she replied. "As I just said, I have
nothing to say--now or at any time."

"That remains to be proved," remarked Bryce. "The phrase is one of much
elasticity. But for the present--I go!"

He walked out into the Close, and without as much as a backward look
struck off across the sward in the direction in which, ten minutes
before, he had sent the strange man. He had rooms in a quiet lane on the
farther side of the Cathedral precinct, and his present intention was to
go to them to leave his bag and make some further arrangements. He had
no idea of leaving Wrychester--he knew of another doctor in the city who
was badly in need of help: he would go to him--would tell him, if need
be, why he had left Ransford. He had a multiplicity of schemes and ideas
in his head, and he began to consider some of them as he stepped out of
the Close into the ancient enclosure which all Wrychester folk knew by
its time-honoured name of Paradise. This was really an outer court of
the old cloisters; its high walls, half-ruinous, almost wholly covered
with ivy, shut in an expanse of turf, liber