Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/72

Rh inborn, but if they are not they can be developed only through the discipline of experience.

“That girl in the hospital would have seen it all,” he reﬂected, as the vision of Miss Brent’s small incisive proﬁle rose before him; but the next moment he caught the light on Mrs. Westmore’s hair, as she bent above a card, and the paler image faded like a late moon in the sunrise.

Meanwhile Mrs. Ansell, seeing that the detailed inspection of the buildings was as trying to Mr. Langhope’s lameness as to his daughter’s nerves, had proposed to turn back with him and drive to Mrs. Amherst’s, where he might leave her to call while the others were completing their rounds. It was one of Mrs. Ansell’s gifts to detect the ﬁrst symptoms of ennui in her companions, and produce a remedy as patly as old ladies Whisk out a scent-bottle or a cough-lozenge; and Mr. Langhope’s look of relief showed the timeliness of her suggestion.

Amherst was too preoccupied to wonder how his mother would take this visit; but he welcomed Mr. Langhope’s departure, hoping that the withdrawal of his ironic smile would leave his daughter open to gentler inﬂuences. Mr. Tredegar, meanwhile, was projecting his dry glance over the scene, trying to converse by signs with the overseers of the different rooms, and pausing now and then to contemplate, not so much the [ 60 ]