“What are you doing, poked off here at the end of creation?” cried Cissy. “We’re going to drive over to the club to see the finish and have supper. It’s the most we can do after the way they rushed off and left us!” There was a pettish twitch to her tiny chin. “Emma is having a fit for fear something has happened to ‘dear Julia,’ though I should say she’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself. There’s not the least bit of danger.”
“Danger?” Florence repeated uneasily.
“Why, the fog! Look!” Cissy indicated airily.
Florence saw a gray sea drifting up the bay, ocean above ocean, covering the far turn of the coast, and flowing, white as wool, among the low hills to the south.
“Of course there’s no danger they’ll run into it,” Cissy was saying. “They’ll finish in less than an hour—so hurry.”
Florence’s first impulse was to refuse. Next she wondered why. She was too nervous to be still. She felt, all at once, it would be a great relief to see the riders come in safely. Could she wait till after midnight to be sure of—of what would quiet this senseless uneasiness? She was so sure that it was best to go, she could hardly credit her own refusal. It made Cissy stare. Her look was a mixture of incredulity and relief. It gave Florence a faint amusement in the midst of her abstraction.
With Cissy had returned the rasping confusion that had been with the rush of the riders, but it did not depart with her.
Standing solitary, among the laurustinus bushes, Florence felt the impetus of it about her. She watched the fog gathering in, inclosing land and sea in an ever-narrowing ring. She caught herself wondering if by chance one of the long fingers had caught the hunt in its hook. Suddenly her restlessness, her unease, was crystallized into a sharp anxiety. Was it also an expectation?
She heard the party for the club-house drive away with relief. Why hadn’t she gone with them? What was she waiting for?
A veil was drawn over the burning disk of the sun as he dipped near the ocean. She was chilled with the fine approach of the fog.