Were seventy volumes in red-and-gold to be perhaps what he should most substantially have to show at Woollett as the fruit of his mission?
It was a possibility that held him a minute--held him till he happened to feel that some one, unnoticed, had approached him and paused.

Turning, he saw that a lady stood there as for a greeting, and he sprang up as he next took her, securely, for Madame de Vionnet, who appeared to have recognised him as she passed near him on her way to the door.

She checked, quickly and gaily, a certain confusion in him, came to meet it, turned it back, by an art of her own; the confusion having threatened him as he knew her for the person he had lately been observing.

She was the lurking figure of the dim chapel; she had occupied him more than she guessed; but it came to him in time, luckily, that he needn't tell her and that no harm, after all, had been done.

She herself, for that matter, straightway showing she felt their encounter as the happiest of accidents, had for him a "You come here too ?" that despoiled surprise of every awkwardness.
"I come often," she said.