“But my father!” he answered. “He had no tastes, no interests outside the boundary of your estates.”
She motioned to him to open the gate.
“Perhaps not,” she assented, “yet I suppose that there is not one of us who knows as much of his neighbour’s life as he imagines he does. Good afternoon, Mr. Hurd! My visit has given me something to think about. I may send for you to come to the house before I go away.”
She drove away, leaning back amongst the cushions with half closed eyes, as though tired. The country scenery with its pastoral landscape, its Watteau-like perfections, was wholly unseen. Her memory had travelled back, she was away amongst the days when the roar of life had been in her ears, when for a short while, indeed, the waves had seemed likely to break over her head. An unpleasant echo, this! No more than an echo—and yet! The thought of old Stephen Hurd lying in his grave suddenly chilled her. She shivered as she left the carriage, and instead of entering the house, crossed the lawn to where Gilbert Deyes was lounging. He struggled to his feet at her approach, but she waved him back again.
“Sybarite,” she murmured, glancing around at his arrangements for complete comfort. “You have sent Austin out alone.”
“Dear lady, I confess it,” he answered. “What would you have? It is too fine an afternoon to kill anything.”
She sank into a chair by his side. A slight smile parted her lips as she glanced around. On a table by his side, a table drawn back into the shade of the cedar tree, were several vellum-bound volumes, a tall glass, and a crystal jug half full of some delicate amber beverage, mixed with fruit and ice, a box of cigarettes, an ivory paper-cutter, and a fan.
“Your capacity for making yourself comfortable,” she remarked, “amounts almost to genius.”
“Let it go at that,” he answered. “I like the sound of the word.”
“I want you to go to Paris for me,” she said abruptly.