Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/321

Rh squirrel up there! See, father—he’s off! Let’s follow him!”

As she crouched there, with head thrown back, and sparkling lips and eyes, her fair hair—of her mother’s very hue—making a shining haze about her face, Amherst recalled the winter evening at Hopewood, when he and Bessy had tracked the grey squirrel under the snowy beeches. Scarcely three years ago—and how bitter memory had turned! A chilly cloud spread over his spirit, reducing everything once more to the leaden hue of reality.…

“It’s too late for any more adventures—we must be going,” he said.

XX

MHERST’S morning excursions with his step-daughter and Miss Brent renewed themselves more than once. He welcomed any pretext for escaping from the unproﬁtable round of his thoughts, and these woodland explorations, with their gay rivalry of search for some rare plant or elusive bird, and the contact with the child’s happy wonder, and with the morning brightness of Justine’s mood, gave him his only moments of self—forgetfulness.

But the ﬁrst time that Cicely’s chatter carried home an echo of their adventures, Amherst saw a cloud on his wife’s face. Her resentment of Justine’s inﬂuence [ 305 ]