II
The summer day was drawing to a close. The shadows of the trees were long upon the grass, the sun was sinking through a sky wistful and delicate, faint rose and yellow.
There was a blessed quiet all through the house. Serena and her friends had certainly intended to be back for tea, but they had not come. They never could do what they meant to do. Obstacles intervened, and they were not well equipped for dealing with obstacles. It took so little to stop them, to bar a road, to turn them off toward a new destination. They had not come back, and Geraldine was having her tea alone in the library, reading a book as she sipped it.
That was how Sambo first saw her, sitting, very straight, in a high-backed chair, with the last light of the sunset on her clear, pale face. He said later that she had put him in mind of a Madonna, and there were not many women he knew who could do that. He stood in the doorway, staring at her, for quite a long time—so long that he never afterward forgot how she looked then, so still, so lovely, so aloof.
For a moment he was almost afraid to disturb her.
But the fear of disturbing other persons had not yet greatly influenced young Samuel Randall. He was a conqueror, nonchalant and superb. He took whatever things pleased him in this world. Slender, almost slight, with his fine features, his mournful dark eyes, he had a poetic and touching look about him; but it belied him. He was not poetic. He was greedy, and willful, and reckless.
He wanted to talk to this lovely image, so in he went.
“This a gentle hint?” he asked.
Geraldine put down her book and looked at him.
“I said I was coming to-day,” he went on, “and they’re all out. That mean I’m not wanted?”