Henrietta now joined them. "You take the afternoon express?" said she.
Ross could not conceal how severe a test of his civility this interruption was. "Yes," said he. "My trap is in front of the house."
There he colored before Henrietta's expression, a mingling of amusement, indignation, and contempt, a caustic comment upon his disregard of the effect of such indiscretion upon a Saint X young married woman's reputation. "Then," said she, looking straight and significantly at him, "you'll be able to drop me at my house on the way."
"Certainly," was his prompt assent. When Saint X's morality police should see him leaving the grounds with her, they would be silenced as to this particular occurrence at least. After a few minutes of awkward commonplaces, he and Henrietta went up the lawns, leaving Del there. At the last point from which the end of the garden could be seen, he dropped behind, turned, saw her in exactly the same position, the fountain and the water lilies before her, the center and climax of those stretches of white-and-gold blossoms. The sunshade rested lightly upon her shoulder, and its azure concave made a harmonious background for her small, graceful head with the airily plumed hat set so becomingly upon those waves of dead-gold hair. He waved to her; but she made no sign of having seen.
When Henrietta returned, Adelaide had resumed her reverie and her slow march round the fountain. Henrietta watched with a quizzical expression for some time before saying: "If I hadn't discouraged him, I believe he'd have blurted it all out to me—all he came to say to you."
Del was still absent-minded as she answered: "It's too absurd. People are so censorious, so low-minded."
"They are," rejoined Mrs. Hastings. "And, I'm sorry to say, as a rule they're right."
The curve of Del's delicate eyebrows and of her lips straightened.
"All the trouble comes through our having nothing to do," pursued Henrietta, disregarding those signs that her "meddling" was unwelcome. "The idle women! We ought to be busy at something useful—you and I and the rest of 'em. Then we'd not be tempted to kill time doing things that cause gossip, and may cause scandal." Seeing that Adelaide was about to make some curt retort, she added: "Now, don't pretend, Del. You know, yourself, that they're always getting into mischief and getting the men into mischief."
"Don't you ever feel, Henrietta, that we're simply straws in the strong wind?"