And the warm
sunlight disengaged from her a scent of lavender. Through the library
door a scratching noise told that the dear dogs knew she was not in her
bedroom. Mr. Pendyce, too, caught that scent of lavender, and in some
vague way it augmented his discomfort. Her silence, too, distressed him.
It did not occur to him that his silence was distressing her. He put
down his pen.
"I can't write with you standing there, Margery!"
Mrs. Pendyce moved out of the sunlight.
"George says he is taking steps. What does that mean, Horace?"
This question, focusing his doubts, broke down the Squire's dumbness.
"I won't be treated like this!" he said. "I'll go up and see him
myself!"
He went by the 10.20, saying that he would be down again by the 5.55
Soon after seven the same evening a dogcart driven by a young groom
and drawn by a raking chestnut mare with a blaze face, swung into
the railway-station at Worsted Skeynes, and drew up before the
booking-office. Mr. Pendyce's brougham, behind a brown horse, coming a
little later, was obliged to range itself behind. A minute before
the train's arrival a wagonette and a pair of bays, belonging to Lord
Quarryman, wheeled in, and, filing past the other two, took up its place
in front. Outside this little row of vehicles the station fly and two
farmers' gigs presented their backs to the station buildings.
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