Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/241

Rh “Oh, I was there—but everybody was asking for you"

“Everybody?” Justine gave a mocking lift to her dark eyebrows.

“Well—Westy Gaines, at any rate; the moment he set foot in the house!” Bessy declared with a laugh as she dropped into the arm-chair.

Justine echoed the laugh, but offered no comment on the statement which accompanied it, and for a moment both women were silent, Bessy tilting her pretty discontented head against the back of the chair, so that her eyes were on a level with those of her friend, who leaned near her in the embrasure of the window.

“I can’t understand you, Justine. You know well enough what he’s come back for.”

“In order to dazzle Hanaford with the fact that he has been staying at Lynbrook!”

“Nonsense—the novelty of that has worn off. He’s been here three times since we came back.”

“You are admirably hospitable to your family"

Bessy let her pretty ringed hands fall with a discouraged gesture. “Why do you ﬁnd him so much worse than—than other people?”

Justine’s eye-brows rose again. “In the same capacity? You speak as if I had boundless opportunities of comparison.” [ 225 ]