We
walked without speaking up the dusty village street. Here and there a
crimson window glowed. At the fork of the high-road I said good-bye.
But I had taken hardly more than a dozen paces when a sudden impulse
seized me.
"Seaton!" I called.
He turned in the moonlight.
"You have my address; if by any chance, you know, you should care to
spend a week or two in town between this and the--the Day, we should be
delighted to see you."
"Thank you, Withers, thank you," he said in a low voice.
"I dare say"--I waved my stick gallantly to Alice--"I dare say you will
be doing some shopping; we could all meet," I added, laughing.
"Thank you, thank you, Withers--immensely;" he repeated.
And so we parted.
But they were out of the jog-trot of my prosaic life. And being of a
stolid and incurious nature, I left Seaton and his marriage, and even
his aunt, to themselves in my memory, and scarcely gave a thought to
them until one day I was walking up the Strand again, and passed the
flashing gloaming of the covered-in jeweller's shop where I had
accidentally encountered my old schoolfellow in the summer.
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