"There is so much I want to say," he protested.

She smiled drearily. "You must spare me further humiliation," she
answered. He knew her meaning without more words. He must not speak
to her of her mistake, nor hint of the possibility of her freedom. Yet
it was this possibility that struggled dumbly within them for
recognition, so that now their mood was one of storm, all the more
intense from its repression. They were conscious each moment of the
man who stood between them, no longer the familiar figure, but one
evoked by their mutual guilt and sublimated by Cardington's prophetic
words, strong to avenge himself upon his enemies and betrayers. Leigh,
convinced that Emmet would claim his own, suffered already the anguish
of renunciation, more poignant that the pressure of her unresisting
lips was still felt warmly on his own. Before her house he stooped and
kissed her again without fear of repulse, chastened and subdued.

"Since it is to be good-bye," she said quietly.

He stood where she left him, watching her figure lessening between the
trees until it was swallowed up in the shadow of the house. The door
opened, he saw the crimson flash of her cloak for a moment in the light
from within, and then she was gone.

The bishop, sitting beside the lamp with a book in his hand, glanced up
as his daughter entered, with a keen inquiry in his deepset eyes.

"I thought I just passed you with Mr. Leigh," he remarked, watching the
effect of his words. Her unusual colour and the brilliancy of her eyes
served to confirm his suspicions, though her manner was as studiedly
indifferent as his own. It was with difficulty that she restrained the
trembling of her fingers fumbling with the fastening of her cloak.

"Yes," she answered. "Mr. Leigh met us at the Bradford after the
President's speech, and the night was so beautiful that we walked home
together."

Looking at her attentively, he was struck by a new softness and
radiance in her beauty, and by the fact that the Shaker cloak was
singularly becoming. He thought of his sermon on personal adornment,
and in spite of his anxiety, a deep amusement dawned in his eyes. "And
went around Robin Hood's barn, by the way," he supplemented.

"Is n't the longest way round the shortest way home?" she asked coolly.
His smile had reassured her. Whatever he suspected, it was much less
than the truth.

It was not in the bishop's nature to come out with a direct question
that