Miss Foster presented herself in the group who were waiting for the carriage, and announced to Mrs. Bruce her wish to walk back to the hotel.
BETSY! DEAR BETSY!
“With that girl, I suppose,” said Mrs. Bruce, scorn in her voice. “Do as you please, Betsy. I’ve certainly had one more lesson in letting well enough alone. It is likely she never would have grumbled with her bread and butter and left Mrs. Pogram, if I had not been the means of putting ideas into her head. I’m obliged to admit that you were right, Betsy, when you talked to me about it a few weeks ago.” Mrs. Bruce gave a little sigh. “I wish I weren’t so warm-hearted and impulsive. Doesn’t it lead one into lots of trouble, Mrs. Nixon?”
Mrs. Nixon was of the opinion that it did; and she still held by the arm a victim of misguided emotion. Irving and Robert had disappeared.
“Come home in the carriage with us, Henry,” she said to her captive. “There will be a vacant place now.”
There was still wandering upon the river bank among the overhanging trees a golden-haired dryad, whose presence caused the lady to desire the sanctuary of the park wagon for her brother until she could have a few words with him in private.
This she accomplished after they reached the hotel and she had lured him out upon the large upper veranda, where reclining chairs invited wanderers to repose in the sunshine.
Mr. Derwent recognized the symptoms of extreme solicitude for his comfort, and smiles which were like flashes of heat-lightning. His sister was a woman of much poise, and heat-lightning seldom portends showers; still they had been known to arrive before the atmosphere could clear, and he had the ordinary masculine dread of them.