But when he was dressed in the clothes he had brought with him in his bag, he hesitated to go down alone in this strange house. He strolled about the room, smoking, until Pendleton was ready, and they descended together. There wasn’t a soul to be seen.
“They’ve all gone to church,” said Pendleton.
This struck Vincelle as grossly inhospitable, someone should have been there to attend to him. But a nice little servant brought them an excellent breakfast in the dining room and after it they sat comfortably in front of the fire, enjoying cigars from an open box on the sideboard.
“As soon as they come back, we’ll go,” said Pendleton. And they did so. Mrs. Mason offered them the use of the family omnibus in which they had returned from church, but Pendleton said they’d rather walk. She did not invite them to stop for dinner, which Vincelle considered impolite. If she didn’t want them, why couldn’t she simply invite them in a half-hearted, unacceptable manner?
“I must thank you for a most enjoyable time,” he said ceremoniously.
She smiled and held out her hand.
“Come again!” she said.
Claudine, too, gave him her hand, but her glance and her smile were lamentably devoid of significance. Evidently he wasn’t, for her, a special person; he was nothing but a young man who had come down for a dance. They set out down the hill, and he was able now to gain an idea of the place at his leisure. It was a big wooden house with a cupola on top; it had no pretension to beauty or architectural style, it was in fact, quite hideous and ungainly, made of grey clapboards with a slate roof; square, except that on one side a little greenhouse was built out from the veranda. The garden, too, although large, was not like the gardens of other people: there was no fountain, no nicely set out shrubs. There was a beautiful old box hedge enclosing it, but inside it looked irregular and untidy.
Pendleton was talking cheerfully.
“What do you think of her?” he asked.