The day is still lingering, but one can see that night is beginning to coquet with it. Tender shadows lie here and there in the corners of the curving road, and in and among the beech-trees that overhang it birds are already rustling with a view to slumber. The soft coo-coo of the pigeon stirs the air, and on the river down below, ‘Now winding bright and full with naked banks,’ the first faint glimmer of a new moon is falling—falling as though sinking through it to a world beneath.
‘What are you thinking of, Susan?’ asks Crosby at last, when the sound of their feet upon the road has been left unbroken for quite five minutes. Susan has chatted to him quite gaily all down the avenue, and until the gates are left behind, but after that she has grown—well, thoughtful.
‘Thinking?’ She looks up at him as if startled out of a reverie.
‘Yes. What have you been thinking of so steadily for the past five minutes?’
Thus brought to book, Susan gives him the truest answer.
‘I was thinking of Lady Muriel Kennedy. I was thinking that I had never seen anyone so beautiful before.’
‘That’s high praise.’
‘You think so too?’
‘Well—hardly. She is handsome, very handsome, but not altogether the most beautiful person I have ever seen.’
‘To me she is,’ says Susan simply.