"I have nothing to say to you," answered Mary, sweeping by him
with a highly displeased lance. "Except that you have brought
it on yourself."

"A very feminine retort!" observed Bryce. "But--there is no
malice in it? Your anger won't last more than--shall we say a
day?"

"You may say what you like," she replied. "As I just said, I
have nothing to say--now or at any time."

"That remains to be proved," remarked Bryce. "The phrase is
one of much elasticity. But for the present--I go!"

He walked out into the Close, and without as much as a
backward look struck off across the sward in the direction in
which, ten minutes before, he had sent the strange man. He
had rooms in a quiet lane on the farther side of the Cathedral
precinct, and his present intention was to go to them to leave
his bag and make some further arrangements. He had no idea of
leaving Wrychester--he knew of another doctor in the city who
was badly in need of help: he would go to him--would tell him,
if need be, why he had left Ransford. He had a multiplicity
of schemes and ideas in his head, and he began to consider
some of them as he stepped out of the Close into the ancient
enclosure which all Wrychester folk knew by its time-honoured
name of Paradise. This was really an outer court of the old
cloisters; its high walls, half-ruinous, almost wholly covered
with ivy, shut in an expanse of turf, literally furnished with
yew and cypress and studded with tombs and gravestones. In