Page:The Yellow Book - 02.djvu/280

244 Drayton's wife and then swiftly putting in his name with a scarcely perceptible pause. "Too lazy? But you, Mrs. Drayton?"

"Yes, I'm coming," she said.

They left the tent together, and walked some few steps in silence.

Broomhurst shot a quick glance at his companion's face.

"Anything wrong?" he asked presently.

Though the words were ordinary enough, the voice in which they were spoken was in some subtle fashion a different voice from that in which he had talked to her nearly two months ago, though it would have required a keen sense of nice shades in sound to have detected the change.

Mrs. Drayton's sense of niceties in sound was particularly keen, but she answered quietly, "Nothing, thank you."

They did not speak again till the trees round the stone-well were reached.

Broomhurst arranged their seats comfortably beside it.

"Are we going to read or talk?" he asked, looking up at her from his lower place.

"Well, we generally talk most when we arrange to read, so shall we agree to talk to-day for a change, by way of getting some reading done?" she rejoined, smiling. "You begin."

Broomhurst seemed in no hurry to avail himself of the permission, he was apparently engrossed in watching the flecks of sunshine on Mrs. Drayton's white dress. The whirring of insects, and the creaking of a Persian wheel somewhere in the neighbourhood, filtered through the hot silence.

Mrs. Drayton laughed after a few minutes; there was a touch of embarrassment in the sound.

"The new plan doesn't answer. Suppose you read as usual, and let me interrupt, also as usual, after the first two lines." Rh