Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/186

Rh seated in a seclusion agreeably tempered by the distant strains of the Hanaford band, and by the shifting prospect of the groups below them.

“Ah, here he is now!” the younger of the two exclaimed, turning on Amherst the smile of intelligence that Mrs. Eustace Ansell was in the habit of substituting for the idle preliminaries of conversation. “We were not talking of you, though,” she added as Amherst took the seat to which his mother beckoned him, “but of Bessy—which, I suppose, is almost as indiscreet.”

She added the last phrase after an imperceptible pause, and as if in deprecation of the hardly more perceptible frown which, at the mention of his wife’s name, had deepened the lines between Amherst’s brows.

“Indiscreet of his own mother and his wife’s friend?” Mrs. Amherst protested, laying her trimly-gloved hand on her son’s arm; while the latter, with his eyes on her companion, said slowly: “Mrs. Ansell knows that indiscretion is the last fault of which her friends are likely to accuse her.”

“Raison de plus, you mean?” she laughed, meeting squarely the challenge that passed between them under Mrs. Amherst’s puzzled gaze. “Well, if I take advantage of my reputation for discretion to meddle a little now and then, at least I do so in a good cause. I was just saying how much I wish that you would take Bessy [ 170 ]