Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/397

Rh loath to leave Lynbrook without some deﬁnite light on her friend’s future; but now Amherst’s letter had shed that light—or rather, had deepened the obscurity—and she had no pretext for lingering on where her uselessness had been so amply demonstrated.

She wrote to the matron accepting the engagement; and the acceptance involved the writing of other letters, the general reorganizing of that minute polity, the life of Justine Brent. She smiled a little to think how easily she could be displaced and transplanted—how slender were her material impedimenta, how few her invisible bonds! She was as light and detachable as a dead leaf on the autumn breeze—yet she was in the season of sap and ﬂower, when there is life and song in the trees!

But she did not think long of herself, for an undeﬁnable anxiety ran through her thoughts like a black thread. It found expression, now and then, in the long glances she threw through the window—in her rising to consult the clock and compare her watch with it—in a nervous snatch of humming as she paced the room once or twice before going back to her desk.…

Why was Bessy so late? Dusk was falling already—the early end of the cold slate-hued day. But Bessy always rode late—there was always a rational answer to Justine’s irrational conjectures.… It was the sight of those chestnut ﬂanks that tormented her—she knew [ 381 ]