Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/266

Rh. They were all in league to stiﬂe the incipient feelings he had roused in Bessy, to push her back into the deadening routine of her former life, and the only voice that might conceivably speak for him was Miss Brent’s.

The “case” which, unexpectedly presented to her by one of the Hope Hospital physicians, had detained Justine at Hanaford during the month of June, was the means of establishing a friendship between herself and Amherst. They did not meet often, or get to know each other very well; but he saw her occasionally at his mother’s and at Mrs. Dressel’s, and once he took her out to Westmore, to consult her about the emergency hospital which was to be included among the ﬁrst improvements there. The expedition had been memorable to both; and when, some two weeks later, Bessy wrote suggesting that she should take Miss Brent to the Adirondacks, it seemed to Amherst that there was no one whom he would rather have his wife choose as her companion.

He was much too busy at the time to cultivate or analyze his feeling for Miss Brent; he rested vaguely in the thought of her, as of the “nicest” girl he had ever met, and was frankly pleased when accident brought them together; but the seeds left in both their minds by these chance encounters had not yet begun to germinate. [ 250 ]