Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/45

Rh Mr. Langhope, who sat smoking, with one faultlessly-clad leg crossed on the other, and his ebony stick reposing against the arm of his chair, raised his clear ironical eyes to her face.

“As an archæologist,” he said, with a comprehensive wave of his hand, “I ﬁnd it positively interesting. I should really like to come here and dig.”

There were no lamps in the room, and the numerous gas-jets of the chandelier shed their lights impartially on ponderously framed canvases of the Bay of Naples and the Hudson in Autumn, on Carrara busts and bronze Indians on velvet pedestals.

“All this,” murmured Mr. Langhope, “is getting to be as rare as the giant sequoias. In another ﬁfty years we shall have collectors ﬁghting for that Bay of Naples.”

Bessy VVestmore turned from him impatiently. When she felt deeply on any subject her father’s ﬂippancy annoyed her.

“You can see, Maria,” she said, seating herself beside the other lady of the party, “why I couldn’t possibly live here.”

Mrs. Eustace Ansell, immediately after dinner, had bent her slender back above the velvet-covered writing-table, where an inkstand of Vienna ormolu offered its empty cup to her pen. Being habitually charged with a voluminous correspondence, she had foreseen this contingency and met it by despatching her maid for [ 33 ]