Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/257

 wistful—overcome with grief—prostrated, offended.

She sat upon the lower stair and sipped her cold tea and, as she raised her eyes over the teacup rim, she smiled at him.

'I'd like to see anything that has anything to do with Jane Austen and I want to see the Itchen and the cathedral and the school where they sing "Dulce Domum.

'We had better start pretty soon if we are going to see all that—hadn't we?'

'I'll get my bonnet and my shawl—and my sketch-book. You'll give me time to make a few sketches, won't you?'

'Why, all you want,' he responded, but his heart bled to see how her eyes, which he had always considered long but not very large, had, through the strange alchemy of grief, grown to be enormous and meltingly tender like a madonna's.

She did not want a carriage, she wanted to walk, and he matched his heavier step to her light one and carried her sketch-book and her copy of 'Pride and Prejudice' and an absurd and delicious parasol, made of black chantilly lace, through which the sun might cast shadows of lace flowers and bow knots. He was versed enough in women's clothes to realize that the thing might be wickedly becoming to Lanice. It vaguely hurt him to think that if she were walking through Winchester on Anthony's arm she would unfurl this delicate weapon of her sex and for him display its coquetry. But he took heart to think she