“So you say.” His eyes still mercilessly perused her. “That remains to be seen. If you lose, perhaps I shall come into it.”
III
T was night, and Eppie, Gavan, and Jim Grainger were on the lawn before the house waiting for a display of fireworks.
Grainger was feeling sore for his own shutting-out from the happy child-world of games and confidences that the other two inhabited, for it had been to Gavan that she had spoken of her love for fireworks and he who had at once sent for them.
Grainger was sore and his heart heavy, and not only it seemed to him, on his own account. Since the encounter in the library there had been a veil between him and Eppie, and through it he seemed to see her face as waiting the oncoming of some unknown fate. Grainger could not feel that fate, whatever the form it took, as a happy one.
She stood between them now, in her white dress, wrapped around with a long, white Chinese shawl, and the light from the open window behind them fell upon her hair, her neck, her shoulders, and the shawl’s soft, thick embroideries that were like frozen milk.
Gavan and Grainger leaned against the deep creepers of the old walls, Gavan’s cigarette a steady little point of light, the glow of Grainger’s pipe, as he puffed, coming and going in sharp pulses of color.
Aunt Barbara sat within at the open window, and beyond the gates, at the edge of the moor, the general and the gardener, dark figures fitfully revealed by the light of lanterns, superintended the preparations.