impatiently pushing the tea table a little farther away, reached for her woolwork. Then sinking back by her companion’s side she turned a querulous, anxious, disturbed face toward her.
“Spoiling her illusion? What are you talking about, child?” She sighed heavily and smoothed the lace cuff of one of her wrists with nervous fingers.
“I believe you have a sort of liking for the baggage!” she burst out.
Lady Ann lifted her eyebrows and regarded her with a mocking, slightly contemptuous smile. The daughter of a long line of courtly diplomatists, she began to feel a little irritated with her aunt. “It’s the Gresham blood in her,” she thought. “They always had a second-rate streak.”
“Well!” she said slowly. “I don’t feel that it’s necessary to quarrel with people. One puts oneself on their level in that way, doesn’t one? I daresay the poor little woman has had a hard enough time of it. If I could give her a good round income ; a trim little villa down at Weymouth or somewhere; with a couple of servants and an old enamoured sea captain, shall we say, across the hedge—gracious! I would willingly do it!”
Mrs. Ashover’s countenance expressed the sort of astonishment that she would have felt if Cousin Ann had suddenly kicked one of her neat shoes right across the room.
“You young people are too much for me,” she murmured. “Too much for me. I suppose it’s Rook who has put these ideas into your head,” she added, with a quick glance of stealthy malevolence. “In my time designing minxes like that were not given incomes. They were given the stick!”
Lady Ann leaned forward and laid her strong young hand on the old woman’s knee.
“Do you suppose, Auntie dear, that if I wasn’t sure it would be all right, I should feel as happy as I do to-day?”
Mrs. Ashover’s face cleared a little. There certainly did seem to gleam forth an overpowering confidence and assurance from the girl’s limpid, mysterious gray eyes.
There was a tone of impassioned pleading in the old lady’s voice as she murmured eagerly: “You give me your word? You will save him? You will save him from her?”
Ann Gore dropped her eyelids at this and a smile of deep, sweet, implacable power crossed her mouth, making her full lips, exquisitely childish in their perfect Cupid’s bow, curve so divinely that her aunt leaned over and impulsively kissed her.
“We won’t talk about it any more, child. I understand you. There! I expect you’re wanting to get out now and have your walk. You mustn’t give up the whole of a lovely afternoon to an old troublesome thing like me.”
They both rose to their feet. The air from the open window, treacherous-sweet with the death smell of a world of dying leaves, flowed through them; rousing a poignant response in their deepest nerves.
The wide-stretching unsown plough lands, the patient indrawn leafless woods, the great inert, apathetic breasts of the earth, drew these women toward them in answering reciprocity. To the elder it was as if the strong invisible hands of the dead generations were urging her on, comforting her, sustaining her, in her struggle against her adversary. To the younger it was as if the very spirit of that hibernatingcountryside, lying fallow, secretive, implacable, were calling to her to share in some tremendous waiting ,through rain, through frost, through everything—for the hour of the sowing of the seed.
They stood together for a perceptible space of time, caught, as two people often are, by the very beat of the wings of fate. Then all in a moment they became conscious that they were both listening, intently, absorbingly, to a sound in the garden outside.
It was the sound of a man’s footsteps moving up and down, up and down, with irritating regularity, along the gravel path that ran parallel to the lawn.
They both felt instinctively that the man was Rook; and for that very reason they were each reluctant to go to the window and look out.
“Spoiling her illusion? What are you talking about, child?” She sighed heavily and smoothed the lace cuff of one of her wrists with nervous fingers.
“I believe you have a sort of liking for the baggage!” she burst out.
Lady Ann lifted her eyebrows and regarded her with a mocking, slightly contemptuous smile. The daughter of a long line of courtly diplomatists, she began to feel a little irritated with her aunt. “It’s the Gresham blood in her,” she thought. “They always had a second-rate streak.”
“Well!” she said slowly. “I don’t feel that it’s necessary to quarrel with people. One puts oneself on their level in that way, doesn’t one? I daresay the poor little woman has had a hard enough time of it. If I could give her a good round income ; a trim little villa down at Weymouth or somewhere; with a couple of servants and an old enamoured sea captain, shall we say, across the hedge—gracious! I would willingly do it!”
Mrs. Ashover’s countenance expressed the sort of astonishment that she would have felt if Cousin Ann had suddenly kicked one of her neat shoes right across the room.
“You young people are too much for me,” she murmured. “Too much for me. I suppose it’s Rook who has put these ideas into your head,” she added, with a quick glance of stealthy malevolence. “In my time designing minxes like that were not given incomes. They were given the stick!”
Lady Ann leaned forward and laid her strong young hand on the old woman’s knee.
“Do you suppose, Auntie dear, that if I wasn’t sure it would be all right, I should feel as happy as I do to-day?”
Mrs. Ashover’s face cleared a little. There certainly did seem to gleam forth an overpowering confidence and assurance from the girl’s limpid, mysterious gray eyes.
There was a tone of impassioned pleading in the old lady’s voice as she murmured eagerly: “You give me your word? You will save him? You will save him from her?”
Ann Gore dropped her eyelids at this and a smile of deep, sweet, implacable power crossed her mouth, making her full lips, exquisitely childish in their perfect Cupid’s bow, curve so divinely that her aunt leaned over and impulsively kissed her.
“We won’t talk about it any more, child. I understand you. There! I expect you’re wanting to get out now and have your walk. You mustn’t give up the whole of a lovely afternoon to an old troublesome thing like me.”
They both rose to their feet. The air from the open window, treacherous-sweet with the death smell of a world of dying leaves, flowed through them; rousing a poignant response in their deepest nerves.
The wide-stretching unsown plough lands, the patient indrawn leafless woods, the great inert, apathetic breasts of the earth, drew these women toward them in answering reciprocity. To the elder it was as if the strong invisible hands of the dead generations were urging her on, comforting her, sustaining her, in her struggle against her adversary. To the younger it was as if the very spirit of that hibernatingcountryside, lying fallow, secretive, implacable, were calling to her to share in some tremendous waiting ,through rain, through frost, through everything—for the hour of the sowing of the seed.
They stood together for a perceptible space of time, caught, as two people often are, by the very beat of the wings of fate. Then all in a moment they became conscious that they were both listening, intently, absorbingly, to a sound in the garden outside.
It was the sound of a man’s footsteps moving up and down, up and down, with irritating regularity, along the gravel path that ran parallel to the lawn.
They both felt instinctively that the man was Rook; and for that very reason they were each reluctant to go to the window and look out.
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