VII
HE did not get back until almost dinner time. The meal was not an agreeable one, though Jane-Ellen's part of the performance was no less perfectly achieved than usual. It was evident that there had been a scene between the two ladies. Cora's eyes were distinctly red, and though Mrs. Falkener's bore no such evidence, she looked more haggard than was her wont. Tucker was still feeling somewhat imposed upon, Smithfield's manner suggested a dignified rebuke, Crane felt no inclination to lighten the general tone, and altogether the occasion was dreary in the extreme.
As soon as they had had coffee, Cora sat down at the piano, and drawing Burton to her by a request for more light, she whispered:
"Won't you take me out in the garden? I have something I must say to you."
Crane acquiesced. It was a splendid, misty November night. The moonlight was of that sea-green color which, so often represented on the stage, is seldom seen in nature. The moon concealed the bareness of the garden-beds, lent a suggestion of mystery to the thickets of what had once been flowering shrubs, and made the columns of the piazza, which in the daytime showed themselves most plainly to be but ill-painted wood, appear almost like the marble portico of an Ionic temple.
The air was so still that from the stables, almost a quarter of a mile away, they could hear the sound of one of the horses kicking in its stall, and the tune that a groom was rather unskilfully deducing from a concertina.
Crane whistled the air softly as he strolled along by his companion's side, until she stopped and said with great intensity:
"I want to say something to you, Burton. I'm not happy. I'm horribly distressed. I ought not to say what I'm going to say, at least the general idea seems to be that girls shouldn't—but I have a feeling that you're really my friend, a friend to whom I can speak frankly even about things that concern me."
"You make no mistake there, Cora," he returned.