Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/224

Rh All this, to the initiated eye, was full of suggestion; but its signiﬁcance was as nothing to that presented by the approach of two ﬁgures which, as Mrs. Ansell watched, detached themselves from the cluster about the tennis—ground and struck, obliquely and at a desultory pace, across the lawn toward the terrace. The ﬁgures—those of a slight young man with stooping shoulders, and of a lady equally youthful but slenderly erect—moved forward in absorbed communion, as if unconscious of their surroundings and indeﬁnite as to their direction, till, on the brink of the wide grass terrace just below their observer’s parapet, they paused a moment and faced each other in closer speech. This interchange of words, though brief in measure of time, lasted long enough to add a vivid strand to Mrs. Ansell’s thickening skein; then, on a gesture of the lady’s, and without signs of formal leave-taking, the young man struck into a path which regained the entrance avenue, while his companion, quickening Her pace, crossed the grass terrace and mounted the wide stone steps sweeping up to the house.

These brought her out on the upper terrace a few yards from Mrs. Ansell’s post, and exposed her, unprepared, to the full beam of welcome which that lady’s rapid advance threw like a searchlight across her path.

“Dear Miss Brent! I was just wondering how it was that I hadn’t seen you before.” Mrs. Ansell, as she [ 208 ]