All these things softened the mood in which Maurice came back to the old town, and as he walked up the village street, so well remembered yet so strange, he had a sense of unreality. The very homely familiarity of it all made it appear the more like a dream. He felt his heart-beats quicken as he approached the Ashe place, wondering if he should see Mrs. Ashe. He had always, with all his affection, felt for Philip's mother a sort of awe, as if she were more than a simple human creature. He found it difficult to understand that Mrs. Singleton should be staying with her, so incongruous was the association in his mind of two such women. With Mrs. Ashe, Alice must at least be at her best.
He walked up to the house, passing under the leafless lilac bushes with a keen remembrance of how they were laden with odors in June. He wondered if the tansy still grew under the sitting-room window, and if the lilies-of-the-valley flourished on the north side of the house as of old. Then he knocked with the quaint old black knocker, and with the sound came back the present and the thought that he had before him an interview which might be neither pleasant nor easy.
"I saw you coming," she greeted him, "and there is nobody at home but me."
"No; she is out, and the girl is out. Will you come in? You probably didn't come to see me."
She led the way into the long, low sitting-room, with its many doors and its wide fireplace, so familiar that he might have left it yesterday.
"I can't imagine what you want of me," Mrs. Singleton said, waving her hand toward a chair. "The last time I saw you you didn't seem very fond of me."
She seated herself by the side of the fire in a great old-fashioned chair covered with chintz and spreading out wings on either side of her head.
"You are still angry, Alice, I see," he rejoined. "Well, I can't help that. I did what was right. How in the world could you make up your mind to fool those people so?"
"They wanted to be fooled; why not oblige them?"
He regarded her with astonishment. He had expected her to deny that her deception was deliberate, to claim that the manifestations were real. Her frank and cynical speech disconcerted him. He had no reply. She broke into a sneering laugh.