Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/380

Rh returning party in the hall made Mrs. Ansell, with an almost imperceptible gesture of warning, turn musingly away toward the ﬁre.

Bessy came back brimming with the wonders she had seen. A glazed “sun-room,” mosaic pavements, a marble fountain to feed the marble tank—and outside a water-garden, descending in successive terraces, to take up and utilize—one could see how practically!—the overﬂow from the tank. If one did the thing at all, why not do it decently? She had given up her new motor, had let her town house, had pinched and stinted herself in a hundred ways—if ever woman was entitled to a little compensating pleasure, surely she was that woman!

The days were crowded with consultations. Architect, contractors, engineers, a landscape gardener, and a dozen minor craftsmen, came and went, unrolled plans, moistened pencils, sketched, ﬁgured, argued, persuaded, and ﬁlled Bessy with the dread of appearing, under Blanche Carbury’s eyes, subject to any restraining inﬂuences of economy. What! She was a young woman, with an independent fortune, and she was always wavering, considering, secretly referring back to the mute criticism of an invisible judge—of the husband who had been ﬁrst to shake himself free of any mutual subjection? The accomplished Blanche [ 364 ]