CHAPTER IX
MRS. ESSINGTON SAYS “NO”
SHE wore a gown of sheer white, with a mantle of Spanish lace drawn close over her sloping shoulders and the flowing lines of her arms. Above it her large gray eyes looked out luminously.
“What is it?” she asked. Her face was full of queries. She divined her crisis already upon her.
Without a word he handed her the letter.
She read it through, dwelt on it a frowning space—looked at him while the frown smoothed itself.
His full under lip twitched with a suggestion half cruel, half sensitive. She saw he was suffering, but there was a confusion of feeling, something with which the letter had nothing to do.
“Let us go somewhere else,” she said. Her glance had traveled toward the open door.
He followed her through the library, dreading lest she pause there; but she went on into the conservatory.
He closed the door, shutting them into the room of glass. In the midst of the transparent walls, searched by the sun, they were alone. The north end where the outer door opened, the south end looking on the lift of the hill lawn, were screened thick with heliotrope and passion-vine. The west fronted the skirts of the terrace, the somber, lonely oak-plantation, the distant sea. They saw through glass the out-of-doors, spacious, fresh, moved by the wind. Within, the air was motionless, too hot, too sweet, with scents of newly watered flowers.