"Oh, I may as well. It will only be the third time I've had to own up."

And she proceeded with a careful recapitulation of the events of the afternoon.

"You must have been very frightened," said he as she ended.

"I was," owned Trix.

"Ah, well; it's all over now," he comforted her.

"Y-yes," said Trix doubtfully.

"What's troubling you?" he demanded.

"The sneeze," confessed Trix in a very small voice.

Doctor Hilary stifled a sudden spasm of laughter. She was so utterly and entirely in earnest.

"I wouldn't worry over a little thing like that, if I were you," said he consolingly.

Once more Trix sighed.

"Of course it's absurd," she said. "I know it's absurd. But, somehow, little things do worry me, even when I know they're silly. And there's just enough that's not silliness in this to let it be a real worry."

"A genuine midge bite," he suggested. "But, you know, rubbing it only makes it worse."

She laughed a trifle shakily.

"And honestly," he pursued, "though I do understand your--your conscience in the matter, I'm really very glad you've seen Mr. Danver."

"Well, so was I," owned Trix.

Again there was a silence. They were walking down a narrow lane bordered on either side with high banks and hedges. The dust lay rather thick on the gra.s.s and leaves. It had already covered their shoes with its grey powder. Doctor Hilary was turning certain matters in his mind. Presently he gave voice to them.

"It is exceedingly good for him that someone besides myself and the butler and his wife should know that he is alive, and that he should know they do know it. I agreed to this mad business because I believed it would give him an interest in living, eccentric though the interest might be."

Trix gurgled.

"It sounds so odd," she explained, "to hear you say that pretending to be dead could give any one an interest in life." And she gurgled again.

Trix's gurgling was peculiarly infectious.

"Odd!" laughed Doctor Hilary. "It's the oddest thing imaginable. No one but Nick could have conceived the whole business, or found the smallest interest in it. But he did find an interest, and that was enough for me.

He is lonely now, I grant. But before this--this invention, he was stagnant as well as lonely. His mind, and seemingly his soul with it, had become practically atrophied. His mind has now been roused to interest, though the most extraordinarily eccentric interest."

"And his soul?" queried Trix simply.

Doctor Hilary shook his head.

"Ah, that I don't know," he said.

They parted company at the door of Doctor Hilary's house. Trix went on slowly down the road. She paused opposite the presbytery, before turning to the left in the direction of Woodleigh. She rang the bell, and asked to see Father Dormer.

He came to her in the little parlour.

"Oh," said Trix, getting up as he entered, "I only came to ask you to say a Ma.s.s for my intention. And, please, will you say one every week till I ask you to stop?"

"By all means," he responded.

"Thank you," said Trix. Then she glanced at a clock on the mantelpiece.

"I had no idea it was so late," she said.

She walked home at a fair pace. The midge bite had ceased to worry her.

But then, at Doctor Hilary's suggestion, she had ceased to rub it. She was thinking of only one thing now, of a solitary old figure in a large and gloomy library.

She sighed heavily once or twice. Well, at all events she had asked for Ma.s.ses for him.

CHAPTER XXV

p.r.i.c.kLES

If you happen to have anything on your mind, it is impossible--or practically impossible--to avoid thinking about it. Which, doubtless, is so obvious a fact, it is barely worth stating.

The d.u.c.h.essa di Donatello had something on her mind; it possessed her waking thoughts, it coloured her dreams. And what that something was, is also, perhaps, entirely obvious. Again and again she told herself that she would not dwell on the subject; but she might as well have tried to dam a river with a piece of tissue paper, as prevent the thought from filling her mind; and that probably because--with true feminine inconsistency--she welcomed it quite as much as she tried to dispel it.

Occasionally she allowed it free entry, regarded it, summed it up as unsatisfactory, and sternly dismissed it. In three minutes it was welling up again, perhaps in the same old route, perhaps choosing a different course.

"Why can't I put the man and everything concerning him out of my mind for good and all?" she asked herself more than once. And, whatever the reply to her query, the fact remained that she couldn't; the thought had become something of an obsession.

Now, when a thought has become an obsession, there is practically only one way to free oneself from it, and that is by speech. Speech has a way of clearing the clogged channels of the mind, and allowing the thought to flow outwards, and possibly to disappear altogether; whereas, without this clearance, the thought of necessity returns to its source, gathering in volume with each recoil.

But speech is frequently not at all easy, and that not only because there is often a difficulty in finding the right confidant, but because, with the channels thus clogged, it is a distinct effort to clear them. Also, though subconsciously you may realize its desirability, it is often merely subconsciously, and reason and common sense,--or, rather, what you at the moment quite erroneously believe to be reason and common sense--will urge a hundred motives upon you in favour of silence. Maybe that most subtle person the devil is the suggester of these motives. If he can't get much of a look in by direct means, he'll try indirect ones, and depression is one of his favourite indirect methods. At all events so the old spiritual writers tell us, and doubtless they knew what they were talking about.

Now, Trix was perfectly well aware that Pia had something on her mind; she was also perfectly well aware that it was something she would have an enormous difficulty in talking about. And the question was, how to give her even the tiniest lead.

Trix had stated that she had guessed the colour of the soap-bubble; but she hadn't the faintest notion where it had come into existence, nor where and how it had burst. Nor had Pia given her directly the smallest hint of its having ever existed. All of which facts made it exceedingly difficult for her even to hint at soap-bubbles--figuratively speaking of course--as a subject of conversation.

And Pia was slightly irritable too. Of course it was entirely because she was unhappy, but it didn't conduce to intimate conversation. p.r.i.c.kles would suddenly appear among the most innocent looking of flowers, in a way that was entirely disconcerting and utterly unpleasant. And the worst of it was, that there was no avoiding them. They darted out and p.r.i.c.ked you before you were even aware of their presence. It was so utterly unlike Pia too, and so--Trix winked back a tear as she thought of it--so hurting.

At last she came to a decision. The p.r.i.c.kles simply must be handled and extracted if possible. Of course she might get quite unpleasantly stabbed in the process, but at all events she'd be prepared for the risk, and anything would be better than the little darts appearing at quite unexpected moments and places.

"The next time I'm p.r.i.c.ked," said Trix to herself firmly, "I'll seize hold of the p.r.i.c.kle, and then perhaps we'll see where we are."

And, as a result perhaps of this resolution, the p.r.i.c.kles suddenly disappeared. Trix was immeasurably relieved in one sense, but not entirely easy. She fancied the p.r.i.c.kles to be hidden rather than extracted. However, they'd ceased to wound for the time being, and that certainly was an enormous comfort. Miss Tibb.u.t.t, with greater optimism than Trix, believed all to be entirely well once more, and rejoiced accordingly.