Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/203

Rh that the change was manifest only in his evening-dress, and in the fact of his sitting at the foot of the table.

If Amherst was conscious of the contrast thus implied, it was only as a restriction on his freedom. As far as the welfare of Westmore was concerned he would rather have stood before his companions as the assistant manager of the mills than as the husband of their owner; and it seemed to him, as he looked back, that he had done very little with the opportunity which looked so great in the light of his present restrictions. What he had done with it—the use to which, as unfriendly critics might insinuate, he had so adroitly put it—had landed him, ironically enough, in the ugly impasse of a situation from which no issue seemed possible without some wasteful sacriﬁce of feeling.

His wife’s feelings, for example, were already revealing themselves in an impatient play of her fan that made her father presently lean forward to suggest: “If we men are to talk shop, is it necessary to keep Bessy in this hot room?”

Amherst rose and opened the window behind his wife’s chair.

“There’s a breeze from the west—the room will be cooler now,” he said, returning to his seat.

“Oh, I don’t mind—” Bessy murmured, in a tone intended to give her companions the full measure of what she was being called on to endure. [ 187 ]