"You are tired too? Bessy wrote me you had been quite used up by a trying case after we saw you at Hanaford."
Miss Brent smiled. "When a nurse is fit for work she calls a trying case a 'beautiful' one."
"But meanwhile—?" Mrs. Ansell shone on her with elder-sisterly solicitude. "Meanwhile, why not stay on with Cicely—above all, with Bessy? Surely she's a 'beautiful' case too."
"Isn't she?" Justine laughingly agreed.
"And if you want to be tried—" Mrs. Ansell swept the scene with a slight lift of her philosophic shoulders—"you'll find there are trials enough everywhere."
Her companion started up with a glance at the small watch on her breast. "One of them is that it's already after four, and that I must see that tea is sent down to the tennis-ground, and the new arrivals looked after."
"I saw the omnibus on its way to the station. Are many more people coming?"
"Five or six, I believe. The house is usually full for Sunday."
Mrs. Ansell made a slight motion to detain her. "And when is Mr. Amherst expected?"
Miss Brent's pale cheek seemed to take on a darker tone of ivory, and her glance dropped from her companion's face to the vivid stretch of gardens at their feet. "Bessy has not told me," she said.