One morning in August Mrs. Clarendon was sitting in the garden at Knightswell, with Ada Warren and a young lady named Rhoda Meres, a guest at the house. They had chosen a spot which was often resorted to for tea on hot afternoons, a little piece of lawn closely shut in with leafage, whence an overbowered pathway led out to the front garden. The lady of Knightswell sat reposefully in a round-backed rustic chair. She wore a pretty garden costume, a dainty web of shawl just covering her head, her crossed feet just showing below the folds of her dress. An open sunshade lay tumbled on the grass beside her, and on her lap was an illustrated paper, of which she turned the leaves with idle interest. Miss Warren sat a couple of yards away, reading a review. Her dress was plain, and of dark material, and she wore a brown broad-brimmed straw hat. The other young lady made no pretence of being occupied. With knit brows and bent head she walked backwards and forwards on the grass, biting a long leaf which she had pulled from a bough in passing. She was a pretty girl, fair-cheeked and graceful of form. She carried her hat by its ribbon, and let the stray sunlight make gleamings upon her golden hair. Her age was not quite nineteen, and the beautiful lines of her maiden figure lost nothing by her way of holding herself, whether she moved or stood.
After several side glances at her silent companions, she presently came to a pause before Mrs. Clarendon’s chair, and, still holding the leaf between her lips, asked, rather plaintively:
“Why shouldn’t I, Mrs. Clarendon?”
Isabel looked up with suave smiling features, and met the girl’s eyes in silence for a moment.
“My dear Rhoda,” she said then, “why should you?”
“No,” urged the girl, “I think all the reasons are needed on the other side. I must do something, and this is what I think I’m suited for. Why shouldn’t I?”
“For one thing, because you are a lady, and ladies don’t do such things.”
“There you have Mrs. Clarendon’s last word,” remarked Ada Warren, without looking up. Her voice contrasted strangely with those which had been just heard; it was hard in tone, giving clear utterance to each syllable, as if to accentuate the irony in her observation.
“Certainly,” said Isabel, with good humour; “if Rhoda is content to let it be.”
Still biting her leaf, Miss Meres held her head a little on one side, and, after glancing at Ada, turned her eyes again upon Mrs. Clarendon.