Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/172

Rh successes, but with a directness of aim due also to his larger opportunities of comparison.

“The roses will do,” he explained, as he guided her through the increasing circle of guests about his mother; and in answer to Justine’s glance of enquiry: “To get you away, I mean. They’re not much in themselves, you know; but everything of the governor’s always begins with a capital letter.”

“Oh, but these roses deserve to,” Justine exclaimed, as they paused under the evergreen archway at the farther end of the lawn.

“I don’t know—not if you’ve been in England,” Westy murmured, watching furtively for the impression produced, on one who had presumably not, by the great blush of colour massed against its dusky background of clipped evergreens.

Justine smiled. “I have been—but I’ve been in the slums since; in horrible places that the least of those flowers would have lighted up like a lamp.”

Westy’s guarded glance imprudently softened. “It’s the beastliest kind of a shame, your ever having had to do such work"

“Oh, had to?” she ﬂashed back at him disconcertingly. “It was my choice, you know: there was a time when I couldn’t live without it. Philanthropy is one of the subtlest forms of self—indulgence.”

Westy met this with a vague laugh. If a chap who [ 156 ]