Mr. Ferguson came out of the wood path, across the garden and on his usual beat, up the terrace steps. He had a spray of lemon verbena in his hand and as he walked over the grass with his long, light stride, he kept his eyes on the balcony keen and expectant, his face all eager and serious. Suddenly it changed, brightened, softened, glowed like the sunlight had fallen on it—you didn't need to be a detective to know she'd come out of the study.
This time she came down the steps and went toward him. They met under my window and stood there, he facing me, brushing his lips with the spray of lemon verbena and looking down at her, a lover if ever I saw one. He asked her what she was doing that afternoon, and she said going for a walk, and when he wanted to know where, she said through the woods to the beach. "A solitary walk?" he asked and she said yes, her walks were always solitary.
"By preference?"
She turned half away from him and I could see her profile. I'd hardly have known it for Miss Maitland's, soft, shy, the cheek pink. Her eyes were on the toe of her shoe, white against the green grass, and with her head drooping she was like a girl, bashful and blushing before her beau.
"It generally is by preference," she said.
"Would it exclude me," he asked, "if I tried to butt in?"
She didn't answer for a moment, then said very low:
"Not if you really wanted to come—didn't do it just to be kind to a lonesome lady."
"Lonesome lady be hanged," he exclaimed as joyful as if she'd given him a kiss, "it's just the other way round—kindness to a lonesome gentleman. I'm terribly lonesome this afternoon."
But he wasn't going to be long—far from it. Round the corner of the house, walking soft as a cat, came Mrs. Price. She made me think of a cat every way, stepping so stealthy, her body so slim and lithe, a small, secret smile on her face as if she'd come on two nice little helpless mice. She was all in white, shining and spotless, a tennis racket in one hand, a bunch of letters in the other. They didn't see her and she got quite close, then said, sweet and smooth as treacle: