Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/32

Rh their advance was checked by a group of persons who were just descending from two carriages at the door.

The lamp-light showed every detail of dress and countenance in the party, which consisted of two men, one slightly lame, with a long white moustache and a distinguished nose, the other short, lean and professional, and of two ladies and their laden attendants.

“Why, that must be her party arriving!” Miss Brent exclaimed; and as she spoke the younger of the two ladies, turning back to her maid, exposed to the glare of the electric light a fair pale face shadowed by the projection of her widow’s veil.

“Is that Mrs. Westmore?” Miss Brent whispered; and as Amherst muttered: “I suppose so; I’ve never seen her she continued excitedly: “She looks so like—do you know what her name was before she married?”

He drew his brows together in a hopeless effort of remembrance. “I don’t know—I must have heard—but I never can recall people’s names.”

“That’s bad, for a leader of men!” she said mockingly, and he answered, as though touched on a sore point: “I mean people who don’t count. I never forget an operative’s name or face.”

“One can never tell who may be g01ng to count,” she rejoined sententiously.

He dwelt on this in silence while they walked on [ 20 ]