Page:Maud Howe - A Newport Aquarelle.djvu/151

 dresses. She was going to the picnic, and had half promised to drive out with the Englishman. She knew, with the unfailing instinct of a woman, that if she drove with him to-day, she would be asked the most serious question which man can put to woman. For a week past he had tried to see her alone, he had sought for an opportunity to speak the words which she was not ready to hear, and she had with a hundred artifices, so skilful that he had not perceived them, put off the decisive moment.

She breakfasted, or made a pretence of so doing, with Mrs. Fallow-Deer in that good lady's boudoir,—a charming little room, hung in sea-green silk, and furnished in veritable antique carved wood.

As Mrs. Fallow-Deer sat in a high-backed chair, pouring tea from a classic urn, a fearful and wonderful pyramid of laces and ribbons placed on the summit of her poll, Gladys looked at her and sighed deeply. This, then, was the end of it all. The kind