Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/143

Rh it. He would not taint his disappointment with mockery, but would leave it among the unspoiled sadnesses of life…

He ﬂung himself into the boys’ sports with his usual energy, meaning that their last Saturday with him should be their merriest; but he went through his part mechanically, and was glad when the sun began to dip toward the rim of the woods.

He was standing on the ice, where the river widened just below the house, when a jingle of bells broke on the still air, and he saw a sleigh driven rapidly up the avenue. Amherst watched it in surprise. Who, at that hour, could be invading the winter solitude of Hopewood? The sleigh halted near the closed house, and a mufﬂed ﬁgure, alighting alone, began to move down the snowy slope toward the skaters.

In an instant he had torn off his skates and was bounding up the bank. He would have known the ﬁgure anywhere—known that lovely poise of the head, the mixture of hesitancy and quickness in the light tread which even the snow could not impede. Half-way up the slope to the house they met, and Mrs. Westmore held out her hand. Face and lips, as she stood above him, glowed with her swift passage through the evening air, and in the blaze of the sunset she seemed saturated with heavenly ﬁres.

“I drove out to ﬁnd you—they told me you were here—I arrived this morning, quite suddenly…”

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