As he had anticipated, he was one of the last arrivals, but he was not destined to experience the embarrassment he feared from this circumstance. The wide hallway of the great house was deserted, and he threaded his way through several dimly lighted drawing-rooms in the direction of a voice that indicated the location of the lecturer. Not until he stood in the doorway of what appeared to be an assembly hall, and was in reality the ballroom of the house, did he realise the reason of the obscurity through which he had passed. At the far end of the room, he saw one of the well-known portraits of Philip IV projected by a lantern upon a huge sheet of canvas. The widening shaft of light that traversed the intervening space dimly disclosed the audience as a series of heads, from which arose a sibilant wave of amused comment as the portrait of the king melted into that of his daughter, a serious infant with corkscrew curls, all unconscious of the monstrous absurdity of her voluminous skirts. This transition from one picture to another was accepted by one of the audience as an opportunity to shift his chair, and Leigh saw the bishop's salient profile thrown for a moment on the canvas, before he subsided again to the general level.
The young man supposed that in thus discovering the whereabouts of the bishop he had also located his daughter, and he marked the spot against the restoration of full light to the room. Meanwhile he maintained his position in the door, and would have continued to do so, had not his host tiptoed to his side and thrust him into a near-by chair.
For some time he remained almost rigidly still, as if he would make amends for the slight noise of his entrance by subsequent self-effacement. The succession of pictures, even the surrender of Breda and the scene of the jolly drinkers, shared his attention with that part of the room in which he had seen the bishop rise, but he soon realised that no further discoveries were possible as yet in that direction, and began to pay more heed to the lecturer.
He knew in a vague way that he was sitting beside a woman; but presently this consciousness increased till it became a delicate and pervasive atmosphere. There was a seduction in the shadowy presence that distracted his thoughts from the woman he loved, sitting somewhere there in the obscurity before him. He experienced a well-nigh guilty pleasure in this temporary yielding to a feminine influence other than that to which he had consecrated himself, and finally he admitted his deliberate appreciation. Leaning back in his chair and turning his head to satisfy his curiosity, he saw for the first time the trick his mind had played him. Convinced though he had been that Miss Wycliffe was in another part of the room, he had known all the time with his senses that she was sitting at his side. At least, it now seemed to him that his apparent disloyalty was in reality an involuntary tribute to her quality. She had made herself felt even when he thought she was another. As he looked down at her rounded cheek and white shoulders, she lifted her eyes with a recognition as suppressed as that of acquaintances in church, and then whispered inaudibly in the ear of a companion beyond. It was now that he saw a bunch of lilies of the valley in the hand that rested in her lap, and knew by what channel his imagination had been awakened.