Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/182

Rh in the marriage which had transformed the assistant manager of the Westmore Mills not, indeed, into their owner—that would rather have tended to simplify the problem—but into the husband of Mrs. Westmore? After all, the mills were Bessy’s—and for a farther understanding of the case it remained to ﬁnd out what manner of person Bessy had become.

Justine’s ﬁrst impression, as her friend’s charming arms received her—with an eagerness of welcome not lost on the suspended judgment of feminine Hanaford—the immediate impression was of a gain of emphasis, of individuality, as though the ﬂuid creature she remembered had belied her prediction, and run at last into a deﬁnite mould. Yes—Bessy had acquired an outline: a graceful one, as became her early promise, though with, perhaps, a little more sharpness of edge than her youthful texture had promised. But the side she turned to her friend was still all softness—had in it a hint of the old pliancy, the impulse to lean and enlace, that at once woke in Justine the corresponding instinct of guidance and protection, so that their ﬁrst kiss, before a word was spoken, carried the two back to the precise relation in which their school-days had left them. So easy a reversion to the past left no room for the sense of subsequent changes by which such reunions are sometimes embarrassed. Justine’s sympathies had, instinctively, and almost at once, transferred [ 166 ]