Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/34

THE IVORY TOWER Bradham, and on drawing nearer called across to her without other greeting: "Won't you walk back with me to tea? Gussy has sent me to bring you."

"Why yes, of course I will—that's nice of Gussy," she replied; adding moreover that she wanted a walk, and feeling in the prospect, though she didn't express this, a relief to her tension and a sanction for what she called to herself her tact. She might without the diversion not quite have trusted herself not to emulate, and even with the last crudity, her father's proceeding; which she knew she should afterwards be ashamed of. "Anyone that comes here," she said, "must come on to you—they'll know;" and when Davey had replied that there wasn't the least chance of anyone's not coming on she moved with him down the path, at the end of which they entered upon the charming cliff walk, a vast carpet of undivided lawns, kept in wondrous condition, with a meandering right-of-way for a seaward fringe and bristling wide-winged villas that spoke of a seated colony; many of these huge presences reducing to marginal meanness their strip of the carpet.

Davey was, like herself, richly and healthily replete, though with less of his substance in stature; a frankly fat gentleman, blooming still at eight-and-forty, with a large smooth shining face, void of a sign of moustache or whisker and crowned with dense dark hair cropped close to his head after the fashion of a French schoolboy or the 20