Book The Fifth: De Stancy and Paula Chapter 10

While she walked round, two or three little children in charge of a nurse trundled a large variegated ball along the grass, and it rolled to Paula's feet. She smiled at them, and endeavoured to return it by a slight kick. The ball rose in the air, and passing over the back of a seat which stood under one of the trees, alighted in the lap of a gentleman hitherto screened by its boughs. The back and shoulders proved to be those of De Stancy. He turned his head, jumped up, and was at her side in an instant, a nettled flush having meanwhile crossed Paula's face.

'I thought you had gone to the Hotoie Promenade,' she said hastily. 'I am going to the cathedral;' (obviously uttered lest it should seem that she had seen him from the hotel windows, and entered the square for his company).

'Of course: there is nothing else to go to here--even for Roundheads.'

'If you mean ME by that, you are very much mistaken,' said she testily.

'The Roundheads were your ancestors, and they knocked down my ancestors' castle, and broke the stained glass and statuary of the cathedral,' said De Stancy slily; 'and now you go not only to a cathedral, but to a service of the unreformed Church in it.'

'In a foreign country it is different from home,' said Paula in extenuation; 'and you of all men should not reproach me for tergiversation--when it has been brought about by--by my sympathies with--'