Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/142

Rh had led the usual sports, coasting down the steep descent from the house to the edge of the woods, and skating and playing hockey on the rough river-ice which eager hands kept clear after every snow-storm. He always felt the contagion of these sports: the glow of movement, the tumult of young voices, the sting of the winter air, roused all the boyhood in his blood. But today he had to force himself through his part in the performance. To the very last, as he now saw, he had hoped for a sign in the heavens: not the reversal of his own sentence—for, merely on disciplinary grounds, he perceived that to be impossible—but something pointing to a change in the management of the mills, some proof that Mrs. Westmore’s intervention had betokened more than a passing impulse of compassion. Surely she would not accept without question the abandonment of her favourite scheme; and if she came back to put the question, the answer would lay bare the whole situation.… So Amherst’s hopes had persuaded him; but the day before he had heard that she was to sail for Europe. The report, ﬁrst announced in the papers, had been conﬁrmed by his mother, who brought back from a visit to Hanaford the news that Mrs. Westmore was leaving at once for an indeﬁnite period, and that the Hanaford house was to be closed. Irony would have been the readiest caustic for the wound inﬂicted; but Amherst, for that very reason, [ 128 ]