Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/223

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RS. was engaged in what she called picking up threads. She had been abroad for the summer—had, in fact, transferred herself but a few hours earlier from her returning steamer to the little station at Lynbrook—and was now, in the bright September afternoon, which left her in sole possession of the terrace of Lynbrook House, using that pleasant eminence as a point of observation from which to gather up some of the loose ends of history dropped at her departure.

It might have been thought that the actual scene outspread below her—the descending gardens, the tennis-courts, the farm—lands sloping away to the blue sea-like shimmer of the Hempstead plains—offered, at the moment, little material for her purpose; but that was to view them with a superﬁcial eye. Mrs. Ansell’s trained gaze was, for example, greatly enlightened by the fact that the tennis-courts were fringed by a group of people indolently watchful of the ﬁgures agitating themselves about the nets; and that, as she turned her head toward the entrance avenue, the receding view of a station omnibus, followed by a luggage-cart, announced that more guests were to be added to those who had almost taxed to its limits the expansibility of the luncheon-table.