"You absurd child! You've not changed a bit except to grow more so!" Justine laughed, paying amused tribute to the childish craving for "a compliment" that still betrayed itself in Bessy's eyes.
"Well, you have, then, Justine—you've grown extraordinarily handsome!"
"That is extraordinary of me, certainly," the other acknowledged gaily. "But then think what room for improvement there was—and how much time I've had to improve in!"
"It is a long time, isn't it?" Bessy assented. "I feel so intimate, still, with the old Justine of the convent, and I don't know the new one a bit. Just think—I've a great girl of my own, almost as old as we were when we went to the Sacred Heart: But perhaps you don't know anything about me either. You see, I married again two years ago, and my poor baby died last March...so I have only Cicely. It was such a disappointment—I wanted a boy dreadfully, and I understand little babies so much better than a big girl like Cicely.... Oh, dear, here is Juliana Gaines bringing up some more tiresome people! It's such a bore, but John says I must know them all. Well, thank goodness we've only one more day in this dreadful place—and of course I shall see you, dear, before we go...."
XI
After conducting Miss Brent to his wife, John Amherst, by the exercise of considerable strategic skill, had once more contrived to detach himself from the throng on the lawn, and, regaining a path in the shrubbery, had taken refuge on the verandah of the house.
Here, under the shade of the awning, two ladies were seated in a seclusion agreeably tempered by the distant strains of the Hanaford band, and by the shifting prospect of the groups below them.
"Ah, here he is now!" the younger of the two exclaimed, turning on Amherst the smile of intelligence that Mrs. Eustace Ansell was in the habit of substituting for the idle preliminaries of conversation. "We were not talking of you, though," she added as Amherst took the seat to which his mother beckoned him, "but of Bessy—which, I suppose, is almost as indiscreet."
She added the last phrase after an imperceptible pause, and as if in deprecation of the hardly more perceptible frown which, at the mention of his wife's name, had deepened the lines between Amherst's brows.