Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/283

 tea” Oh! What a fool he is! What an absolute ass!

On the second of these two meetings she had read “Reuben Hallard.” She loved it! She thought it astounding! The most wonderful first novel she had ever read. How had he been able to make one feel Cornwall so? She had been once to Cornwall, to Mullion and it had been just like that! Those rocks! it was like a poem! And then so exciting!

She had not been able to put it down for a single minute. “Mother was furious with me because there I sat until I don't know how early in the morning reading it! Oh! Mr. Westcott, how wonderful to write like that!”

Her praise inflamed him like wine. He looked at her with exultation.

“Oh! you feel like that!” he said, drawing a great breath, “I did want you to like it so! “He was enraptured—the world was heaven! He did not realise that some young woman at a tea-party the day before had said precisely these same things and he had said: “Of all the affected idiots!”

This might all be termed a period of preparation—that period was fixed for Peter with its sign and seal on a certain evening of spring when an enormous orange moon was in the sky, scents were in all the Chelsea gardens, and the Chelsea streets were like glass in the silver luminous light.

Peter was walking home after a party at the Rossiters'. It was the first time that he had been invited to their house and it had been a great success. Dr. Rossiter was a little round fat man with snow-white hair, red cheeks and twinkling eyes. He cured his patients and irritated his relations by his good temper. Mrs. Rossiter, Peter thought, had a great resemblance to Bobby's mother, Mrs. Galleon, senior. They were, both of them, massive and phlegmatic. They had both acquired that solemn dignity that comes of living up to one's husband's reputation. They both looked on their families—Mrs. Rossiter on Clare and Mrs. Galleon on Millicent, Percival and Bobby—with curiosity, tolerance and a mild sort of wonder. They were