“She, too, remained at Duciehurst,” said one of the sour old ladies.
Adrian rose precipitately. The boat, headed downstream, was now in the middle of the channel, and he gazed at the rippling, shimmering expanse as if he had it in mind to attempt its transit. Here, at all events, was something which he did not turn into ridicule. The great house beyond its ruinous levee rose majestically into the noontide sunlight, all its disasters and indignities effaced by the distance. The imposing, pillared portico, the massive main building with its heavy cornice, the broad wings, the stone-coped terraces, all were distinct and differentiated, amidst the glossy magnolias that, sempervirent, aided its aspect of reviviscence, with a fain autumnal haze softening its lines, and the brilliant corrugated surface of the river in the foreground.
He stood gazing vainly upon it, as it seemed to recede into the distance, till, presently, the boat rounded a point and it vanished like an unsubstantial mirage, like a tenuous mist of the morning.
CHAPTER XII
It was through no will of her own that Mrs. Floyd-Rosney had remained at Duciehurst. She had been eager and instant in the preparations for departure as soon as the approach of the boat was heralded. She had aided the old nurse with convulsive haste by hustling the baby’s effects into his suitcase, jamming his cap down on his head and shaking him into his coat with little ceremony. She had seen from the broken windows of the deserted music-room the Ducie brothers, the last of all the procession of travelers, wending down toward the great white shell in the river slowly approaching, throwing off the foam in wreaths on each side. The two men walked shoulder to shoulder; now and again they paused to confer; then going on; and there was something so affectionate in their look and attitude, almost leaning on one another, so endearing in the way in which one would lay his hand on the other’s arm that tears sprang to her eyes, and, for the moment, she felt that nothing was worth having in the world but the enduring affection of a simple heart, which asks naught but love in return.
The momentary weakness was gone as it had come. She could feel only elation—to be going, to get out of the house of Randal Ducie, which she had entered with reluctance, even when she had doubted his claim, and now that it had been proved valid in fact, if not in law, she could scarcely wait to be quit of it.
In the hall, as she flustered forth—as Floyd-Rosney would have described her agitated movements—she was astonished to come upon her husband, placidly pacing up and down, his deliberate cigar between his lips, his hands clasped behind him.
“Why, dear,”—she used the connubial address from force of habit, for her voice was crisp and keenly pitched—“aren’t you ready?”
“Seems not,” he said, looking at her enigmatically.
“But we shall be left!” she exclaimed.