Dot declared afterwards that the birthday-party had been all she could have desired. Everyone had been nice to everyone, and the baby hadn't been rude to his uncle, a calamity she had greatly feared. Also Nap was improved, hugely improved. Didn't Bertie think so? He seemed to have got so much more human. She couldn't realise there had ever been a time when she had actually disliked him.
"P'r'aps we're more human ourselves," suggested Bertie; a notion which hadn't occurred to Dot but which she admitted might have something in it.
Anyway, she was sure Nap had improved, and she longed to know if Anne thought so too.
Anne's thoughts upon that subject, however, were known to none, perhaps not even to herself. All she knew was an overwhelming desire for solitude, but when this was hers at last it was not in the consideration of this question that she spent it.
It was in kneeling by her open window with her face to the sky, and in her heart a rapture of gladness that all the birds of June could not utter.
She scarcely slept at all that night, yet when she rose some of the bloom of youth had come back to her, some of its summer splendour was shining in her eyes. Anne Carfax was more nearly a beautiful woman that day than she had ever been before.
Dimsdale looked at her benignly. Would her ladyship breakfast out-of-doors? She smiled and gave her assent, and while he was preparing she plucked a spray of rose acacia and pinned it at her throat.
"Dimsdale," she said, and her cheeks flushed to the soft tint of the blossom as she spoke, "Mr. Errol is coming over this morning. I expect him to luncheon."
"Mr. Errol, my lady?"
"Mr. Nap Errol," said Anne, still intent upon the acacia. "Show him into the garden when he comes. He is sure to find me somewhere."